Amherst, NH author Thomas Fisher presents his powerful memoir about the discovery of a family secret and the ability to find a sense of belonging from this revelation.
There were Blueberry pie stains on the ceiling of our butterscotch-colored Dodge Dart when I was a boy. I suppose those pie stains would be the punchline of a joke in most families, but in ours, they were a warning.
Our home was not safe and would never be the refuge we wished or needed it to be.
My father vented alcoholic rage on our family, especially my beloved mother. Our home was an unpredictable, frightening place where love was routinely conflated with violence. Where all gifts - including food and the beds we slept in - were really loans that compounded hourly – even on paid balances.
As for those pie stains? They happened when my father smashed a heavy glass pie plate into my mother’s face as we drove along Route 128. Traumatic events like this were a regular part of my childhood, the memories of which left me emotionally isolated and adrift in adulthood.
If not for my grandfather William, I just might have given up on family and surrendered to the demons of my upbringing.
“Gifts from Prometheus” explores the social and family circumstances that drove my grandfather from Georgia to Boston in 1917, and the insidious— but no less powerful—forms of racism that forced him to pass for White in 1929 when he joined the Boston Police Department.
The two-year journey to understand my grandfather’s life led me to Georgia, historic railroad towns of the Piedmont Airline route, Augusta’s segregated “Golden Blocks,” Cypress swamps along the Savannah River, forlorn cemeteries, and the neighborhoods of my native Boston. Places that long ago were imprinted in my DNA, but now are forever installed in my memories.
The book helped me understand – now with a stakeholder’s perspective - the realities of race in America. It forced me to confront my childhood complicity in bigotry - and challenged half-truths we were taught about the righteousness of the North on matters of race.
Paradoxically, “Gifts from Prometheus” is a story about love. By discovering the unknown heroes in our family history --- people of character and honor – I finally came to understand the redemptive power of family. This knowledge helped me heal generational wounds and discover feelings of belonging, heritage, and gratitude - that I was so desperate for.
The book also revealed impossible-to-ignore coincidences and mysterious forces, that once I chose to heed them, urged me along to complete the book and find peace in my remaining years. --Publisher's blurb
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