Award-winning essayist and LA-native Heather Haldeman to release personal memoir with Apprentice House
Haldeman brings the reader with her on a journey of growing up in the “Mad-Men” era, in an exclusive gated Los Angeles community with celebrities and political figures as neighbors, and all of the realities that come with it.
“The first time I read it I was bowled over, and each time I return to it, I find some new wonder. It’s a book about a culture – and a way of being – that seems almost fantastical, although it was just a few decades ago.” said Caitlin Flanagan, author and writer for The Atlantic.
This moving memoir explores machinations of gender and power dynamics in the 1960s and ‘70s as they unfold in Heather’s family, including Marilyn’s need to find a new husband, complete with a resume (bathing suit photo by the pool) and fancy new clothes. What other choice does she have? Meanwhile, cars are repossessed and the fashionable house they live in is crumbling to pieces. In Heather’s young life, nothing is as it appears. As Heather comes of age, she must make decisions about how she wants her own life to look. Which of the many inheritances of her parents will she keep and which will she jettison?
Heather Haldeman lives in Pasadena, California. She has a loving husband, three grown children and two granddaughters. Her work has been published in The Christian Science Monitor, Chicken Soup for the Soul, From Freckles to Wrinkles, Grandmother Earth, The Mom Egg and numerous online journals. She has received first, second and third prizes for her essays. Visit her blog at Heatherhaldeman.blogspot.com.
Kids & Cocktails Don’t Mix will be available for purchase from online booksellers and select bookstores in the LA and Pasadena areas.
