Highway 11: A Memoir

<p>When my sister, Valerie, committed suicide, I looked back to the choices we made and wrote this book. <em>Highway 11 </em>is the title of my 60,000 word memoir. I grew up on that swath of road between Monroe and Winder, Georgia. It was a whiskey soaked, Southern Baptist upbringing, in a blue collar family. I moved away, as soon as I bought a car, while Valerie got pregnant in high school and lived in Monroe all her life with her husband and two children.</p> <p>My first stop was Atlanta, in 1969, for the “Age of Aquarius,” where I was a hippie and protested the Vietnam War. I lived out of a suitcase for ten years as a flight attendant for United Airlines in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Honolulu. During that time, I married Bob, a nice Jewish boy, and converted to Judaism in 1973. We lived in Newport Beach, California for 20 years and reared our three children in the Jewish faith.</p> <p>Valerie got her GED went on to earn a master’s degree in journalism and became a freelance writer. She wrote a novel the year before she died. It is a southern gothic tale with a Eudora Welty style and voice. She had an agent, but the book was never published.</p> <p>Bob and I returned to Georgia for the last seven years of my mother’s life. When I put Mother in the nursing home, Valerie became depressed. She took her life three years later.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts in Professional Writing (MAPW)

Level thesis:degree_level

Capstone

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year dc:date.available

2017

Author dc:creator

• Benowitz, Judy

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dr. Linda Niemann
• Dr. William Rice

• CBS Studios
• Buick Roadmaster
• Ivah Ree
• xanax
• Pride of Sussex
• Prescious
• Creative Writing

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/mapw_etd/20

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu:mapw_etd-1021