http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/2258630869

Autumn Balloon

"Every autumn, Kenny Porpora would watch his mother scribble heartbroken messages on balloons, one for each family member they'd lost to addiction, and release them into the sky above Long Island. As the number of balloons grew, his mother fell deeper into alcoholism and depression, and his parents' already fraught relationship became terrifyingly unstable. When their house was foreclosed upon, Kenny's mother defied her custody agreement and fled with him, his brother, and their beloved dog to the Arizona desert. There, they joined up with his drug-addicted uncle in his quixotic search for a better life, and Kenny's adolescence was characterized by a series of upheavals, the final one the gravest of all. In their wake, Kenny found solace in books and poems by the writers who would become his guides and mentors and eventually lead him toward college and graduate school. Porpora's memoir is the story of a deeply dysfunctional but intensely loving family, and follows him from the chaos of his youth to his academic triumphs. At times darkly comic, at times elegiac, The Autumn Balloon is a beautifully written testament to the irreplaceable bonds of family"--Page 4 of cover.

Open All Close All