Under the Birch Tree by Nancy Chadwick

This is beautiful, calm writing about overcoming adversity in Nancy Chadwick's memoir. Her favorite trees are birch trees. She calls them Birch Buddies whenever she sees them in her travels. She starts out by finding solace under the only Birch tree in her childhood home among the other trees in her yard. She discovers a hole under her Birch tree filled with a litter of baby bunnies. Her older brother Tim removes the bunnies and displaces them. She lives with a disconnected family. Her brother, mother and father share a home but don't have any closeness.

Her father takes her with him every Saturday morning to the barbers, but they don't have a meaningful relationship. Her mother and father sleep in twin beds and he is always away on business trips. It comes as no surprise when her father announces that he is divorcing her mother. She recounts her solitude in growing up with an anxious mother. When Nancy goes off to college she is looking to fit in. We accompany her on many jobs in advertising. She gets let go at one job after another, no matter how hard she works.

Nancy Chadwick writes lovely descriptive prose about her inner and outer landscapes. We can see the bright sunshine on a crystalline blue Lake Michigan. We can feel the four seasons on her solitary walks. I am glad I read this memoir of coming of age in the early 1960's. Highly Recommended.

Thank you to Net Galley and Nancy Chadwick

It may be the generation gap, but I struggled to feel a connection with the author and her writing style. There seemed to be too much dialogue for a memoir, and I didn’t see the theme of the book as heavily as I wanted to. I wish the author shared more about what she learned about home through her years of life and multiple moves.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is not a memoir of a woman who underwent some terrible tragedy or discovered she was heiress to a secret fortune, but rather a story about an average woman growing up in an average middle class home. I could relate to Chadwick’s story on many levels, we are about the same age, had father’s who were given to violent outbursts and had a difficult time finding proper professional fits. Chadwick relates the story of her middle class upbringing, emotionally distant mother and angry father and her love of the birch tree that grew in their yard. She goes on to highlight some of the low lights of her personal and professional relationships as an adult. A well written memoir of an average American woman doing her best to succeed