Still Waters [Hardcover]

Jennifer Lauck (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 2001

Anger is a poison ivy in the heart and if it grows unchecked, it covers all the soft spaces where you love and understand and feel joy.
There's power in anger, sure, a power that can help you survive.
But true wisdom is in knowing when to let it go.

In "Still Waters, Jennifer Lauck continues the riveting true story begun in her critically acclaimed memoir, "Blackbird.

Clutching her pink trunk filled with secret treasures, the last relics of a lost childhood, twelve-year-old Jenny steps off a bus in Reno and straight into the wide-open future, where no path is certain except that of her own heart....Separated from her brother, Bryan, and passed from caretaker to caretaker, Jenny endures as she always has: by following the inner compass of the survivor. But when Bryan chooses a shocking, tragic destiny, Jenny must at last confront the secrets, lies, and loneliness that have held her prisoner for years. Embarking on a search for answers, the adult Jenny discovers that the past cannot be locked away forever -- even when unraveling one's own anger and pain seems an impossible feat. Now, in the warmth and understanding of her marriage, in the eyes of her child, and in powerful conversations with a dynamic young priest, Jennifer finds her own miracles. A hardened heart learns to love. A damaged soul finds peace. And life, once merely a matter of survival, becomes rich with the joys of truly "living.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Readers who breathed a sigh of relief at the end of Blackbird, when 12-year-old orphan Jennifer Lauck was rescued from an abusive stepmother, will have to grit their teeth all over again for the second volume of her memoirs. Jennifer is adopted by her father's sister Peggy and her husband Dick Duemore: he's bullying and mean; she means well but doesn't want to hear anything negative and responds with cold anger to Jennifer's unwanted confidences and insufficiently cheerful behavior. She never feels wanted in a house where she seems valued only for the chores she performs---never well enough for Mom and Dad (as the Duemores insist she call them after the adoption), who remind her constantly how grateful she should be. In prose as stark as if it had been scraped with a scalpel, Lauck recounts an adolescence scarred by lovelessness and haunted by unfinished emotional business from her parents' deaths and separation from her older brother, Bryan. She's honest about her rage and inability to trust: we see her rejecting a sweet high school boyfriend and holding Bryan at arm's length during two brief reunions. Bryan's suicide is a low point, but it starts the healing process; she leaves a failing marriage, and the happiness she finds with her second husband helps her come to terms with her past. No one reading this pitiless book will think Lauck has forgiven the relatives whose lies and selfishness had such disastrous consequences for her and Bryan; she's bitter and she has reason to be. "I know there is a power to anger, the kind of power that helps you survive," she muses in a crucial passage that shows her moving on to acknowledge the necessity of "pulling [anger] back in order to make room for the good things like love and understanding and joy." --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

Those who relished Lauck's bestselling memoir Blackbird will dive happily into this satisfying sequel. It picks up at the bus station where readers left little Jennifer meeting her grandfather, who they hoped would provide a safe haven after the tragic events that left her orphaned and at the mercy of a wicked stepmother. This book opens with the police report of her brother Bryan's suicide; while its impact may be less dramatic to Lauck's first-time readers, they'll soon become absorbed by her compelling backstory and believable young voice. After settling into her grandparents' cozy trailer home, Jennifer learns that it's temporary; soon she will live with her Aunt Georgia and Uncle Dick. Other relatives take in Bryan, and they remain in separate households. In her new home, Jennifer becomes wary of the grownups who take advantage of her monthly Social Security checks but show little affection for her. She makes friends in high school and chronicles the vicissitudes of early love. In her first year of college, Lauck learns of Bryan's suicide, and his fate is never far from her mind. After a failed first marriage, Lauck finds happiness in a second marriage and a child, with the help of therapy and New Age inspiration. Eventually, she sets out to learn why her brother killed himself, and her journey ends with a spiritual awakening. Lauck's voice successfully blends the tragic-turned-triumphant heroine with the everywoman. Women readers especially will identify with her high school romances and college and career travails. (Oct. 9)Forecast: A 14-city tour, Blackbird's human interest cliffhanger and that book's success will take this one far.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Atria; 1ST edition (October 2, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743439651
• ISBN-13: 978-0743439657
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,233,550 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

This is me, Jennifer Lauck, and I have been a writer since I was seventeen years old. My Honor English teacher, at Mead Sr. High in Spokane, Washington discovered my gift. Karla Nuxoll told me to become a writer, "you are that good," she said.

I paid attention to Karla, enrolled in journalism classes in college and went on to become an investigative journalist in Montana, Washington and Oregon.

Finally, I stopped working in news in the 90's and began the investigation of a lifetime-one that took me into the very interior of my soul.

The results of that trek were the books Blackbird, Still Waters and Show Me the Way. My final memoir, Found, is now available here on Amazon!

Found: A Memoir with the remarkable and generous Seal Press, wraps up a fifteen year quest to knowing myself, which ends when I find the woman who gave me life but was forced to put me up for adoption. In finding my mother, I found what had been missing from my life--an identity! I am now writing a novel on dreams and producing essays on mothering, life, spirituality and wholeness.

I live in Oregon and am blessed with two children, Josephine and Spencer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gives real meaning to the word hope..., October 4, 2001

By 

noone42 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Still Waters (Hardcover)

I usually never read sequels, even in biographies. They never seem to measure up to the first book. But this is definitely not the case in "Still Waters".

Jennifer Lauck picks up right where she left off in "Blackbird". From there, she and her brother are kept apart and sent from family member to family member. Mostly following her heart, Jennifer grows up and slowly gets passed her childhood.

With a life story left unfinished in "Blackbird", Lauck once again has opened her heart and her history to share her story. What once left us in heartbreak now teaches us that following your heart and working through life, anyone can survive. If you read "Blackbird", you will not want to miss "Still Waters".

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The power of anger, July 5, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Still Waters (Paperback)

Those who read Lauck's first memoir, Blackbird, will expect to find a continuation in Still Waters of the upbeat note on which that first book ended. They would be wrong. Life did NOT go well for Jennifer Lauck when she was picked up at the bus station by her grandfather and left eventually at the 'safe haven' of her aunt and uncle's home. Although by the conclusion of Still Waters, we are asked to believe Lauck, with the help of New Age spirituality, has at last made peace with her tragic past, one can't help believing that it wasn't the power of hope that carried her to a relatively triumphant adulthood: it was the power of rage.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I am going to be a better Dad, December 31, 2001

By 

Benny Howard (Eugene, Or) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Still Waters (Hardcover)

This is a fantastic book, relates the undertones of Jennifer's feelings very strongly. Just less than halfway through the book, I made a decision to be a one hundred percent good Dad, This is how much Jennifer has effected me, helped me and will help my children. I read the [Amazon.com] rules to writing reviews and it states we should recommend similar items, I want to recommend another Oregon writer that has a super book called SB 1 or God by Karl Mark Maddox