Just try to escape.
Marie will try. But will she succeed?Marie will try. But will she succeed?
Young songbird Marie longs to fly free of her suffocating mill town. But when music school in Chicago offers escape, someone will try to kill her dream.
Is it the scheming daughter of the local mob boss? Or the arrogant pianist she can’t get out of her head?
Or worst of all, her own mother?
A ROSE IN ASHES, my prequel to ON THE WING, is not a flashback but a flash forward, to the story of Marie’s adult daughter, Lee, and the troubled relationship with her mother.
She was just a child when Marie gave her the artificial rose. But years later its plastic thorns have come to symbolize the bitterness that grew between them.
Now, standing at her mother’s graveside, she must finally decide: Forgive Marie, or cling to the resentment that’s plagued three generations. Begin this sprawling family saga now.
True Story.
My books aren’t autobiographical, but they are inspired by people and events in my life, starting with the dramatic life of my mother, Joan Marie Starr.
1. Joanie Starr
Only days before, we’d stolen her back from the mob. And while my joy at being a family again proved short-lived, those first few days on the run were among the happiest I can remember. (Read more)
2. Clean Slate
Here was her chance to start over again. Then came that late-night phone call. “Be on the next plane back,” the voice said, “Or we’ll throw acid in your face and hurt your kids.” (Read more)
3. Born to Run
Escaping her mob-connected husband wasn’t the first time Joanie went on the lamb. She’d been running from the very start, from one hell to another. (Read more)
4. A Dark History
In the waning years of the Great Depression, the WPA sent photographers across the US to record its impact. 1940 brought one to Midland, PA, to document the dreary world of 10-year old Joanie. (Read more)
5. Canton, 1962
My suspicious family reunion: Just weeks from now, we’ll flee Ohio and the dangerous man on her left. Is she keeping her plan secret here, not only from him, but from everyone in her family? (Read more)
6. Another Try
When I was 22, my mother and I found each other again. And so, eleven years after she was forced under threat of violence, to return to Ohio, I began putting all the pieces back together. (Read more)
7. The Plot Thickens
But to cope, that little eleven-year-old boy inside me had constructed a personal mythology in which winged goddesses flitted in and out of my art and writing. (Read more)
8. With New Eyes
Now a little sister born during those lost years has appeared, and suddenly I am confronted with a different take on the events of my own life. How will I reconcile such revisionist history? (Read more)
The True Story Timeline
My family's story begins uneventfully in a small factory town in southeastern Ohio.
When my mother launches her singing career, it sparks friction and fighting at home.
My father's issues drive her into the arms of a man who had mob connections.
She leaves him, my parents reconcile, and we flee Ohio for Texas. I'm 11, my sister 13.
Mob threats against the three of us force her reluctant return to entrapment in Ohio.
Hurt, in the dark, I ignore her letters. We won't see each other again until I'm 23.
While we're apart, Mom meets Paul and spends her happiest years with him.
