Autobiography: A Rose for My Mother, by Nancy Lee Canfield

In A Rose for My Mother, Nancy Lee Canfield takes us through her difficult childhood as her parents fought poverty in the 1930's-1950's, and struggled to keep the family together. Being in and out of foster care over the course of several years as her family tried to get back on its feet, exposed Nancy Lee to some less than loving situations. All during this time, Nancy Lee experienced some paranormal things that had people labeling her as "spooky." It wasn't until later in life that Nancy Lee gained a deeper understanding of what her experiences, paranormal and other, actually meant to who she was as a person.

The summary of this book states that it is "An extraordinary true story of how a girl's turbulent childhood shaped and prepared her for a lifetime of studying and researching paranormal phenomena."

This story was a first hand account of the author's early life and struggles during a historic period of war and poverty. It was a real insight as to how families dealt with certain circumstances during that era. The paranormal activities mentioned by the author throughout her childhood were presented as a few odd happenings, and only one stood out as disturbing. I feel that the author must have had more experiences that forged her later life desire to learn and do more in the field than the few that were mentioned in the first 200 pages of the book, but they were not brought to light. However, she shows how one girl survives the daily assaults on feminism, her body, and her emotions while trying to become a woman, and the difficult decisions that have to be made in order to survive the times.

In the last 100 pages, or so, the reader finally gets to the meat of the paranormal which Nancy Lee has involved herself with. One gets to read about her meetings with various experts in the field, her education on the subject, as well as learn the answers to earlier experiences she had which she did not understand at the time.

This story was one woman's recollections of a life hard lived. She was fortunate enough to find the support she needed as an adult and moved forward into a career of helping others deal with the paranormal activities that effect many of us. The book ends with exercises that are supposed to help a person tune into his or her sensitivities. I did not try these, but found them interesting.

On a scale of 1-4, I give this book a 3. Overall, I liked the story of the author's life, though I felt better connections could have been made between the author's childhood experiences and her grown up desire to delve deeper into the paranormal.

This book was published by iUniverse.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-3123-7

Thank you to Nancy Lee Canfield for the gift of this book.