Road Song A Memoir (Audible Audio Edition) Natalie Kusz Barbara Caruso Recorded Books Books
Download As PDF : Road Song A Memoir (Audible Audio Edition) Natalie Kusz Barbara Caruso Recorded Books Books
In 1969, Natalie Kusz and her family abandoned the city, packed up the car, and headed to Alaska. They ended up a hundred miles from Fairbanks in a dilapidated house surrounded by 258 acres of spruce, birch and willow - and no road. When the first winter came - with Mr. Kusz working in Prudhoe Bay, money running out, and temperatures 60 below - the Kusz family was living so close to disaster that the question was not when it would strike but whom.
Road Song A Memoir (Audible Audio Edition) Natalie Kusz Barbara Caruso Recorded Books Books
Natalie Kusz has written a fine, strong, unusual memoir about her loving, eccentric family, their life in Alaska, and the accident that maimed her face. One of the things that sets Road Song apart is that the latter, a truly horrific event early in the story, is just one of the book's compelling threads, an important one but not its focus.The title tells you that, in large part, this is a book about a joyous family. What Kusz focuses on is always different and unexpected—there are so many surprises in this book. For instance, the nature of her adolescent rebellion and her family's response.
Her muscular prose, reflective bent, and her interest in other people and in deeper meanings lend the memoir a feeling of profundity. Yet it is lighthearted for a tale of so much struggle, truly loving and life-affirming.
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Road Song A Memoir (Audible Audio Edition) Natalie Kusz Barbara Caruso Recorded Books Books Reviews
EXcellent book! Lemme emphasize that, okay? ROAD SONG, by Natalie Kusz. Simply EXcellent. Kusz's story of her childhood and young adulthood is a combination tale of fierce family love and, often, desperate deprivation and poverty, in the unforgiving conditions of the Alaskan "outback" in the 1970s. The life was chosen by her parents, who chucked a middle class life in California to live in the "sticks" of Alaska. Her father was a Polish immigrant with a tragic story of DP camps and family separation during and after the war; her mother feared inherting the paranoid schizophrenia of her own mom.
Kusz's story of the family's decision to move to Alaska, traveling the Al-Can highway and meeting other unconventional sorts seems fairly straightforward and unremarkable for the first fifty pages or so, but then seven year-old Natalie is mauled and horribly disfigured (nearly killed) by a vicious sled dog, and years - literally 'years' - of hospitalizations and reconstructive surgery involving long separations and crippling debt take over the Kusz family's life.
Kusz, who lost an eye, in the dog attack, is quite unsentimental in her depiction of her own plight, but shows uncommon understanding of how it affects the family dynamic over the next several years. Her descriptions of the cruelty of other children - to her and her siblings are both shocking and heartbreaking.
The writing is eloquent and wise beyond the years of the author, who, despite her own and other family tragedies, manages to make something of her life, overcoming enormous adversity. I have nothing but admiration for Natalie Kusz. At the risk of being redundant, this is an EXcellent book!
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER
If you are feeling sorry for yourself, a good antidote might be to read ROAD SONG. Because Natalie Kusz and her family probably had rougher ordeals and went through tougher times . . . yet they end up laughing with one another. If ever there was a "feel good" book about triumph over adversity, ROAD SONG is it . . . with nary a trace of phoniness or gratuitous sentimentality.
Natalie Kusz's father, Julius, was born in Poland. He, his brothers, and his father suffered at the hands of the Nazis, the Russians, and anti-Semitic Poles (although Christian, they would not join in the persecution of Polish Jews); they spent time in labor camps and concentration camps and somehow three of them survived and made it to the United States. Their story could fill out a book of its own, but for purposes of this book Kusz reduces it to eight pages. After several years in the U.S., Julius met, pursued, and eventually married Verna. With four small children, Julius and Verna decided that Southern California was too artificial for them, so they pulled up stakes and drove to Alaska in a van . . . singing road songs all the way.
Life in Alaska was difficult. Home was first a trailer and then a series of jury-rigged structures without indoor plumbing and insufficiently heated and insulated against the Alaska winter. Good, steady work was hard to come by, and even harder after Julius had his first heart-bypass surgery at age 43. But even before that Natalie and the family had had far more than their share of hardship. Most dramatic was Natalie, at age seven, losing an eye and suffering extensive other damage to her face and head in an attack by a starved sled dog. She narrowly survived; then years of surgeries followed, with treatment more horrendous because her body anomalously rejected bone grafts and tissue transplants from itself. Unsurprisingly, adolescence was more trying for Natalie than it otherwise probably would have been, and she became an unwed mother while still in high school. With uncommon support from her parents, she continued on to college in Fairbanks, taking her infant daughter with her. After a semester, her mother joined her as a student. But then her mother, only 44, died from a heart attack.
Those are the major misfortunes; there were many minor ones too. Yet the book is not a tragedy, not even a sob story. Family, love, and wisdom overcome all the bad cards dealt to the Kuszes, such that, in the end, ROAD SONG is an uplifting book. So many contemporary memoirs wallow in victimization. Not so ROAD SONG. There is not a shred of self-pity. At book's end, the family, although scattered in different places, is hanging together (Nathalie, teaching college in Minnesota, has a monthly phone bill greater than her rent). They are making plans for a summer-time construction project -- to build yet another sixteen-by-sixteen cabin. "[H]opes are white stones shining up from the bottoms of pools, and every clear day we reach in up to the shoulder, selecting a few and rearranging the others, drawing our arms smoothly back into air, leaving no scar on the water." Such is the way of the Kuszes.
Young adults, I think, would particularly profit from reading ROAD SONG (I plan to give copies to all my relatives between ages 15 and 25), but it is one of those rare books that should appeal to everyone.
I thought this was a book about Alaska. That much is my fault I guess. It was a drag from beginning to end. It was a case of poor me so lets write a book about it. I have nothing positive to say about this writer so I'l hold my thoughts where i'm at.
I was very excited when I found this memoir at a gently used bookstore. I thought it was very good. I felt like I was traveling to Alaska right along with Natalie. This is one of those books that you hope will have a sequel someday.
Natalie went though so many trial and tribulations from the attack on her. Thank God she is now a grown lady and survived the ordeal. Mac Turney
Amazing story, hard to put down.
Interesting story of family ties and how life events affect personalities and family relationships. A story of survival.
Natalie Kusz has written a fine, strong, unusual memoir about her loving, eccentric family, their life in Alaska, and the accident that maimed her face. One of the things that sets Road Song apart is that the latter, a truly horrific event early in the story, is just one of the book's compelling threads, an important one but not its focus.
The title tells you that, in large part, this is a book about a joyous family. What Kusz focuses on is always different and unexpected—there are so many surprises in this book. For instance, the nature of her adolescent rebellion and her family's response.
Her muscular prose, reflective bent, and her interest in other people and in deeper meanings lend the memoir a feeling of profundity. Yet it is lighthearted for a tale of so much struggle, truly loving and life-affirming.
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