Mamma S Boarding House

Mamma always had a way of treating everyone as a member of her own family, of giving warmth and comfort and love to people who had known little but loneliness and misfortune. And in the rugged Utah town of Adenville in the early years of this century, there were many who needed her compassion and generosity. So when Papa died and her own children were grown, it was natural for Mamma to open her home to others. Among her boarders were Sarah Martin, angular and tight-lipped, a schoolteacher who took to smoking cigars to win the man she loved...Alonzo Strang, a retired sea captain whose last heroic voyage was in a rowboat...the fastidious faro dealer, Floyd Thompson, who started going to church again so that he could stay at Mamma’s dining table...Mr. Hackett, Papa’s successor as editor of the Advocate, a bachelor so solitary he had almost forgotten how to live with others...and Judge Gibson, competing against the memory of a dead man for Mamma’s love. Continuing his family reminiscences from the best-selling Papa Married a Mormon, John D. Fitzgerald presents a spirited picture of a frontier community. Adenville was a town where a gunfighter shot out his last battle strapped to a lamppost...where the townspeople singing Rock of Ages saved a man from being lynched...where a red-headed artist won his sweetheart in a mad chase across the Utah desert...and where honest conniving staved off an Indian raid. There are moments of suspense as the townspeople rescue a child from his deranged grandfather...moments of hilarity as a pig named Beatrice the Beautiful plays the part of Cupid...moments of terror as a vicious bully menaces the entire town...and many scenes of warm and affectionate family life in Mamma’s boarding house. A poignant, humorous and exciting saga, illuminated by Mamma’s radiant generosity and tolerance, Mamma’s Boarding House is a worthy successor to the highly-praised Papa Married a Mormon.

Humorous account of life in a frontier community in Utah at the turn of the century. Continues the author's family reminiscences begun in "Papa married a Mormon".

The true story of a young man's experiences while growing up in a North Carolina cotton mill town during the Great Depression of the '30s.

The Jewish mother feels her job isn't done even after death. You're never too dead to be a Jewish mother." --Mallory Lewis, daughter of Shari Lewis * What do Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, Jon Stewart, Bette Midler, and Natalie Portman have in common with this book? A Jewish mother. Is there such a thing as a Jewish mother? And if so, who is she? For the first time, best-selling Jewish author and humorist Marnie Winston-Macauley examines all aspects of the Jewish mother. Chronicling biblical Jewish mothers to modern-day Yentls, she creates a compendium using celebrity interviews, anecdotes, humor, and scholarly sources to answer these questions with truth and humor. * Contributors to the book range from Dr. Ruth Gruber and Rabbi Bonnie Koppel to Jackie Mason, Amy Borkowsky, John Stossel, Lainie Kazan, and more. * "The definitive source on Jewish mothers." --Eileen Warshaw, Ph.D., executive director of the Jewish Heritage Center of the Southwest

Celeste Bedford Walker, one of the most accomplished contemporary playwrights in Texas, crafts dramas from history and everyday life that illuminate the African American experience in all its variety, tragedy, pathos, and hilarity. Collected here are five of her most acclaimed plays: Sassy Mamas, Greenwood: An American Dream Destroyed, Reunion in Bartersville, Distant Voices, and Camp Logan. The topics treated by Walker are timelier than ever. Sassy Mamas follows “three women of substance and of a certain age who flip the script on gender stereotypes and become involved with younger men.” Greenwood: An American Dream Destroyed tells the powerful story of the horrific attack on the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, once known as the “Black Wall Street.” In Reunion in Bartersville, described by Walker as “a comedy-mystery in two acts,” the 50-year class reunion of Bartersville High School turns to hilarious suspense when an unexpected guest arrives. Recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Distant Voices “resurrects” persons buried in College Memorial Park, the second-oldest African American cemetery in Houston, to celebrate the wisdom of those gone before. Camp Logan is based on real-life events in Houston in 1917, when members of the highly decorated 24th Infantry Regiment were subjected to brutal Jim Crow treatment, resulting in a riot that left dozens dead and the execution of seventeen African American soldiers for mutiny. Readers and audiences should be prepared to laugh out loud, to be challenged, to be disturbed, and above all, to be enlightened by this poignant collection of plays.