Summary of Sally Field's In Pieces

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 I long to hear my mother’s laugh again, see her walk towards me, and feel safe. I am still trying to figure out why I was so anxious as a child, and why I could not act like the other kids.

#2 I have a memory of clinging to her, a vision so dimly lit that it slips from my grasp like a dream after waking. She had eyes the color of dark chocolate, laced with feathery black lashes, and was clearly drop-your-jaw beautiful.

#3 My mother had a career when she was young, which was something her family had never done before. She met my father while he was in the army, and they married when he returned home.

#4 My mother had spent her late adolescence and early adulthood in this house, living with her parents and older brother. It was where she had stayed when she was the lonely wife of a soldier expecting their first child, and where her beloved father had suffered a fatal heart attack.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Feb 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669350439

IRB Media

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Insights on Sally Field's In Pieces

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I long to hear my mother’s laugh again, see her walk towards me, and feel safe. I am still trying to figure out why I was so anxious as a child, and why I could not act like the other kids.

#2

I have a memory of clinging to her, a vision so dimly lit that it slips from my grasp like a dream after waking. She had eyes the color of dark chocolate, laced with feathery black lashes, and was clearly drop-your-jaw beautiful.

#3

My mother had a career when she was young, which was something her family had never done before. She met my father while he was in the army, and they married when he returned home.

#4

My mother had spent her late adolescence and early adulthood in this house, living with her parents and older brother. It was where she had stayed when she was the lonely wife of a soldier expecting their first child, and where her beloved father had suffered a fatal heart attack.

#5

My grandmother, Joy, was always my favorite aunt. I loved visiting her, and she would always chase me and my brother around the lemon tree with a switch when we got disobedient.

#6

The women in Joy’s house were all connected to each other, like they were playing a lifelong game of Red Rover. They never talked about themselves, their past, or their present. I never learned anything about them from eavesdropping or any other way.

#7

My great-grandmother, Joy, had a father who she thought was Grover Bickley, the same as her sisters’. But he was not. When she was nineteen, she took a train trip to Chicago and met the rascal of a man she would forever after refer to as her father.

#8

I recently found an old storage box filled with my grandmother's belongings. Among them was a crumbling leather diary written in 1935 when she was thirteen. In it, she wrote about her father losing his job, their money troubles, and their move out of their home.

#9

I had always thought that the man who took what he wanted without any consequences was a dashing figure, but in reality, it was the woman who had struggled her entire life to be beside her child.

#10

I was born in Huntington Memorial Hospital, not far from Joy's cottage. My father grew up in Warren, Pennsylvania, and didn't migrate to California until right before the U. S. entered World War II. He was drafted into the army in 1941, and served as a medical registrar for First General Hospital in London and outside Paris for three