Lessons in Printing: A Memoir (Paperback)
In the middle of her college years Klancy de Nevers’ father began to hear voices. Her reaction to his breakdown was not what you would expect from a “well-brought-up” girl. At a time when housewives waxed floors, ironed sheets and washed woodwork, the mentally ill were often warehoused, or tranquilized and sent home to fend for themselves. Shielded by her mother from the reality of his condition, de Nevers willingly looked away, and didn’t mourn when he died. In Lessons in Printing, exploring evidence carefully preserved by her family, she revisits her father’s life and reconsiders her own responses. The result is a meditative memoir, a journey from scorn to compassion, from guilt to forgiveness.
Klancy Clark de Nevers has lived in Salt Lake City longer than she can remember but her writings grow out of an upbringing in the Pacific Northwest. She is author of The Colonel and the Pacifist: Karl Bendetsen, Perry Saito and the Incarceration of the Japanese Americans during World War II. An essay, “My Life with Fonts,” recently appeared in Cagibi Literary Magazine.