Chickenhouse Chronicles

In this biography, author Wendell Affield researches the life of his stepfather, Herman. Follow Herman's four-year search for a wife through Lonely Heart's Club publications. Herman, a shy WWII veteran, eventually responds to the personal ad of a New York pianist with four children. In 1949, Barbara moves out to his rural Minnesota farm with her young children, including the author. The book includes a rare 52-page Lonely Hearts Catalogue from 1945 and was designed as a Women's Studies resource or research text for those studying women's plight following WWII.

Caught between, a mentally ill mother and a stepfather with undiagnosed PTSD, Author Wendell Affield's childhood was, marked by family dysfunction. In this memoir, which includes nearly 100 illustrations, he recounts growing up on an isolated farm in northern Minnesota in the 1950s. Musty letters, documents, and sixty-year-old photo negatives conjured memories as Affield, pored over them. In a grainy negative beneath the magnifying glass, Affield saw his mother as the beautiful, mentally ill young woman transplanted in 1949, from her cosmopolitan New York roots. She stands beside the lilac that the author will land next to a few years later, after jumping from a second story window to escape her fury. Memories of a murdered puppy and his stepfather's rage rose to the surface as Affield, studied a blurred image of the corncrib the dogs were, tied beneath at the farm. In another picture, he discovered himself wedged between, his brothers and sister in a leaky rowboat and flashed back to the summer his mother hid from her abusive husband in a cabin perched above Lake Chelan in the Cascade Mountains. Faded photos and hand-written birth dates on the backs reveal a woman, who feared forgetting her children after she was, committed to a mental institution, her children in foster homes. Follow along on this journey as the author researches his own childhood and uncovers brand new details about himself and his family.

BARBARA is a riches-to-rags tale about an extraordinarily talented, troubled young woman. After Barbara's death in 20 I 0, the author, Wendell Affield, discovered thousands of documents locked in a rodent-infested chickenhouse. Having spent his childhood living with his mother's mental illness, Affield studies the contents in an effort to understand his mother's life and search for clues to his biological father. BARBARA, PARTS I and II, explore Barbara's two-decade downward spiral as she struggles with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Taught by the famous pianist, Emile Bosquet at Institut Droissard, Brussels, Belgium, Barbara's natural talent blossoms. Mouse-gnawed 1939 documents reveal Barbara's impulsive engagement (and possible marriage) in Poland, and her narrow escape from the Nazi invasion. Upon her return to New York, after dropping out of juilliard School, Barbara begins a decade of running from her problems, leaving a wake of failed marriages and rendezvous resulting in four children. Feeling abandoned by her family and searching for a new start, she posts an advertisement in Cupid's Columns that is answered by a bachelor farmer in northern Minnesota. BARBARA, Part III, chronicles the author's search for his biological father and the labyrinth leading to a breakthrough. Acceptance by his new-found family is an incredible testament to the power of love.