By Kathie Malley-Morrison
The Path is a journey through the creative careers of three women writers from one family. Widowed at age 44 in the middle of the Great Depression, with three kids to raise, Ernestine Cobern Beyer’s goal of enhancing her meager income by selling her poems led to her career as one of the most popular children’s poets of the 20th century. Her daughter Barbara caught the writing bug and created rollicking stories of family foibles, personal misadventures, and boating and flying mishaps— which have entertained thousands of readers of her magazine articles, memoir (Take My Ex-Husband, Please—But Not Too Far) and her blog, Tears and Laughter at 90.blogspot.com.
Granddaughter Kathie has written largely on more serious issues—war and peace—but has also published stories on her blog, engagingpeace.com.
Their memoir is amply illustrated with photos, sketches, and paintings to add color to their poetry and prose.
About the Authors
Barbara Malley excels at making lemonade out of lemons. Is the horse on the loose and the goat in the lilacs? Is her younger son the greatest debater since Abraham Lincoln? Her rollicking tales invite laughter. Her heartaches—the loss of a daughter in an auto accident and the loss of a son to ALS—provoke sadness and empathy in any reader’s heart.
After decades of publishing scholarly books and articles for academic audiences, Barbara’s daughter Kathie Malley-Morrison is writing for a more general community, a community that cares about friends and family, a community that favors nonviolence over violence, a community that enjoys a good laugh but also a good cry. She reaches some of these people through her blog, engagingpeace.com, but hopes to reach more through this three-generational memoir, written with her mom in honor of all the family and friends who embrace her now and have gone before.