Teresa Bruce

“It isn’t practical, my quest to find my rolling childhood home and say a thirty-years-too-late goodbye to a four-year-old-boy.”

This is a memoir of Teresa Bruce who travels the Pan-American Highway in an avion camper with her husband Gary shortly after marriage. This trip mirrors the trip that Teresa went on as a young girl in 1974 with her parents and her sister 2 years after the death of her younger brother. The ultimate goal of the trip is to find the camper that her family had travelled in and eventually sold before heading home. Ulterior motives include recollecting memories, exploring South America, reconnecting with people whose paths they crossed 30 years prior, understanding her parents better, and coming to terms with her brother’s death. She seems particularly interested in learning about her parents’ motives and grieving process during this journey. She does not recollect her parents talking about the death of her brother or even mentioning his name. It is obvious when meeting people along this journey that her mother spoke to others very much about her dead brother, a realization that surprises the author.

To me, this journey felt very foolish. Both trips contained near death experiences. The travelers were pitted against corrupt police demanding bribes. The travelers made poor choices. For instance, Teresa brings a gun along, which haunts her the entire trip. They are continuously embarrassed by their apparent flaunting of wealth in their Avion with American plates as they drive through poverty stricken regions. The writing is disjointed, the characters are coming undone… So, for me, it was a tedious unenjoyable read.

The journey begins after a visit to Teresa’s home and parents. What I couldn’t understand was why Teresa never engaged her parents in conversation about the past rather than decide to relive this journey, that for her, didn’t seem enjoyable the first time. I took a chance on this book from netgalley knowing that I needed to read a travel memoir as part of the BookRiot 2017 reading challenge. I almost gave up so many times. I’m surprised that I actually read to the end. The writing felt disjointed. It read like diary entries that had been slightly reworked with some facts and tidbits thrown in about the history & geography of the area that didn’t necessary fit with the driving themes of the book.… (meer)

Teresa Bruce's THE OTHER MOTHER is called "a rememoir." Perhaps this slightly off-kilter term is a hint - or a warning? - that what follows is not a traditional memoir. It is in fact a combination memoir/biography - selected pieces of Bruce's own life blended into that of her subject, dancer-choreographer Byrne Miller, who is that "other mother" of the title. This kind of book is certainly not unique, and Bruce is a good writer. But attempting to link up two real-life stories in a single narrative while doing justice to both lives is never a simple hat trick, and consequently there is, I think, a certain unevenness in the final product.

Bruce was a young broadcast journalist, originally from Oregon, working her first job at a small public TV station in Beaufort, South Carolina, when she met Byrne Miller in 1991. Miller, then in her 80s, headed her own dance company, and was something of a local celebrity. Miller's husband of sixty years, Duncan, was suffering from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. An immediate bond formed between the young reporter and the aging dancer. Bruce had studied ballet and rhythmic gymnastics as a girl, until a serious back injury had permanently sidelined her from those endeavors. So that connection of athleticism and the arts was the initial catalyst to a friendship, one which deepened over time, as Miller offered support and advice to Bruce, who was at the time enmeshed in an abusive common-law marriage to Sonny, an explosively violent surfer she'd met in Mexico.

Bruce gives plenty of ink to the long, perfect, fairy tale union of the Millers, but there are gray areas that only become clear as she gradually reveals more about their "open marriage," a schizophrenic daughter, and the so-called "brilliance" of Duncan's writing. You know the expression about when something seems too good to be true, it probably isn't? Well ditto for the Miller marriage. In fact, when I finally learned the truth about Duncan and his writing (very late in the book), I began to wonder if his brilliant career as an ad man might also have been an invention. There seems to be, in fact, a kind of calculated deception in the way Bruce spins out the Millers' tale, finally revealing important truths only in the book's final pages and the Afterword, perhaps to preserve that 'fairy tale' aspect of the marriage.

As for Bruce's own story, it remains very patchy, and I wondered if she were saving the best parts for another memoir which is currently in the works.

I know little about dance as an art or a discipline, and there is plenty on that subject here, as well as name-dropping of a number of famous or semi-famous dancers. Unfortunately I found none of this particularly interesting.

Bottom line: this is very much a book for women. It is all about the support women in crisis are able to offer each other. In this case, Teresa Bruce needed that "Other Mother" that Byrne Miller provided. Indeed, she was only one of several "daughters" that Miller had collected over the years. As I've already noted, Bruce is a good writer, a more than capable wordsmith. Women, especially those who have experienced difficult or abusive relationships, will relate to the stories here - both Teresa Bruce's and Byrne Miller's. It might also work well as suggested reading for Women's Studies.… (meer)