Faded Pictures from My Backyard: A Memoir

by Sue Carswell

Book Overview

Sue Carswell grew up with two families: her own and the one comprised of the orphans living in her backyard. Though the Carswells' house is on the grounds of the Albany Home for Children, where Sue's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345438566
• ISBN13: 9780345438560
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.6" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

A Backyard To Remember

Sue Carswell's Memoir Faded Pictures From My Backyard was a profound read. It touched my heart, my soul and made me realize how much my family means to me. When I picked up this book I can honestly say I didn't put it down until the very last page. I became engulfed, intrigued, enveloped into a little girls world so different from anything I could imagine.Faded Pictures will take you by surprise and maybe by wonder, too. A defininate book club winner that I am sure will be well known in a very short time.Trust me... Read it...And feel the beauty within.A Memoir worth every picture........

Faded Pictures

What a pleasant surprise! Not being a huge fan of non-fiction, this book caught my interest. I couldn't put it down. Sue Carswell's writing makes you feel as if you are part of the story - that you can actually see the people and places she describes. Her style of writing makes you feel as if you are sitting with her as she tells a story. The heartfelt story she tells of her love for her mother is so poignant that at some points it is almost painful to read - her emotions are so raw and real. The other part of the story is Ms. Carswell's amazing candor as she describes her own problems and obsessions which haunted her throughout a majority of her life. The fact that she has perservered and become a major literary success is a tribute to her strength of character. This is one of the best books I have ever read. It is destined to become a book club favorites and is already scheduled for discussion in my own book club. Veronica Mathers

Publishers Weekly in my opinion is wrong

I am the author of this memoir. Although PW has every right to slam my book if they so feel, they also have a responsibility to get their facts right. This is not a thinly veiled memoir of my deceased mother but rather my love letter to her in the eight years since she has been gone. As I write in my book, her life story is richly textured and full of lessons on how to be a decent and caring parent. This is not a book about my hair-dos over time but a story of a family growing up with an unusual backyard, an orphanage. This is not a book that details the life of a "quasi orphan" it details the life of an orphan -- there is nothing quasi about that. Nor is it the the story of an orphan who becomes an "artist"...It is the story of a little boy who never once had a Sunday visitor throughout his entire childhood growing up on the grounds of the Albany Home for Children and who would later become a football star and esteemed school administrator. That orphan never painted a picture in his life. All said, please read what others have written about my book, but don't let PW whose cowardly reviewers never sign their names be your guiding source for me or other writers works. Thank you - Sue Carswell

I couldn't put this book down, I read it in two days flat.

Faded Pictures from My Backyard" is a compelling memoir of what it was like for a young, inquisitive and caring girl of a family of seven to live in a house on whose backyard sat an orphanage, a riverbank teeming with unruly life, where her father worked as its administrator and her mother its nurse. This is a gripping and heartrending work, because Carswell has captured what often can't be captured or communicated later in adult life, the psychosomatic feel of what it's like to live among orphans. This book is tailor-made for a movie. Especially forceful are scenes of how the orphans' fears were made manifest. That includes scenes depicting an orphan who, day and night, breaks windows desperately trying to escape, but has no place to go. Scenes of orphans setting off fire alarms in their bedrooms every night, jolting everyone out of sleep miles around. Scenes showing a young, terribly burned, suicidal boy, whose mother tried to kill him in a house fire, who desperately wanted to join his mother in heaven--I know, I couldn't stop crying here--and who could only find value in his own life after the orphanage's administrators helped him enact his own wake. Especially heartrending are the scenes where, every year at Christmas, Carswell would stare out her backyard window as orphans trekked across the snow in hand-me-down clothes to celebrate in the orphanage's gym with donated toys under a donated tree, alone, none of their parents in sight. Touching too are scenes about orphan Bob Wygant, who overcame painful obstacles to find success and love with his vivacious and kind wife Sally. All of this is anchored by two powerful moral presences, Carswell's father, John, who selflessly and tirelessly gives of himself daily to the orphans, all the while running his own brood of five towheaded, rambunctious, loving children, including Carswell's bighearted, kind sisters Mandy and Sarah. Helping him along were Carswell's loving, smart Aunt Mary and fun-loving cousin Laurie. And who really comes shining through is Carswell's mother, Elaine, a selfless woman who tirelessly gave herself totally in the clarity of love. Elaine is the heart of the book. Carswell deftly shows how her mother's life was simply about one, little three-letter word: Joy. As Sue's mother's illness advances, as her body is hollowed out by cancer, you'll cry from the pain that echoes throughout these pages, a pain that feels much like a voice echoing in a house without furniture and curtains. Carswell has accomplished quite a feat. She's carefully woven the stories of orphans in with her own feelings of what it was like for a young girl to absorb their pain and emotion. In so doing, Carswell showed how her genetic makeup of depression and sleep disorder was ignited by her backyard, conditions which were only dealt with as an adult living in New York City. There's a timeless lesson here for parents, especially to be aware if their child ne

I couldn't put this book down!

This was a magnificent read. Knowing this family and loving Elaine made it an incredibly satisfying experience. Bob's story and the depiction of the children in care kept me spellbound. Sue's story is one that we can all appreciate. We are so formed, for better or worse, by our environment. Thank you for writing this book. It is truly a love letter to Elaine, to Bob and to your wonderful family. Sue, your sharing of your struggles will help so many people. READ THIS BOOK!!!