Revolving Wheels of Time Power
Sheila Evans ISBN 0-9710988-1-6
Powerful rendering of a mother-daughter relationship over the course of a lifetime!
As an only child, a solitary loner, I bonded with the one constant in my life: my mother. We were reluctant best friends, although I held her eccentricities against her. Her speech never lost its Kansas twang. She never adapted to California freedom and sunshine—and tried to deny them to me as well. Worst of all, in my harsh adolescent judgement, was that she did not drive. After all, this was California, land of freeways! When my father left with his clothes packed in the car, she and I were thrown onto the mercies of public transportation, the bus. We spent our lives on one bus stop bench or another, waiting for the bus, peering into the gray distance of San Fernando Road for the approach of an Asbury Rapid Transit System vehicle.
I broke out of what I considered my mother's self-imposed prison by buying myself a 1940 Ford, sea-green, a convertible. Finally I could pursue the proper California agenda—hang out in Bob's Drive In, day-trip to Catalina Island, barhop in North Hollywood, eat pie at Dupar's, beach party at Zuma with the long-awaited boyfriend. I had arrived.
But I'd left my mother behind. Finally I was free of her excessive practicality, of her suspicions of other people's motives, her stubborn refusal to give flight to her fancy. Or so I thought at the time. I was yet to realize the existence of the evolving bond between mother and daughter that both constricts and enriches.
Under the Camouflage is an examination of that bond, as seen through the eyes of myself as a shy and awkward young girl, so slow to develop, so confused, that I viewed my own marriage as a reliable escape from my mother's. I find that this bond is one that continues, whether one wishes it or not, as long as either mother or daughter lives. Indeed, that bond becomes security, a treasure.
—Chantall Van Wey, Book Review,
"I just finished reading Under the Camouflage. Are there plans for a sequel?
I thoroughly enjoyed crawling into bed with Evans' book . . . and being transported to California and parts of my own childhood.
. . . Her story embodies some universal "coming of age" experiences common to women everywhere. —Marijo Grogan, MSW/CSW
“While many of us have favorite family stories we tell over and over again to anyone who will listen, it takes an extraordinary gift to uncover the sensory details, images and analogies that bring those stories to life. Author, Sheila Evans, possesses just such a gift. In her memoir, Under the Camouflage, Evans tells the tale of a solitary only child whose alcoholic father and melancholy mother are generally at odds with one another. Living under the camouflage netting of the defense plant next door where both her parents work, she finds herself reluctantly bonding with her mother while struggling to break free of the ugly duckling syndrome of puberty to discover she’s really a beautiful swan. Slow to develop and so confused she views her own marriage as a reliable escape from her mother’s, she discovers that “the evolving bond between mother and daughter both constricts and enriches.
Evans’ skillful use of imagery transports readers to a different time and place and evokes just enough detail so that they feel as though it could be their own story.”
—Ruth Flanagan, Editor
* This author's name should be on the New York Times Best Seller list.
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I was born in Kansas, but grew up in Burbank, California, where my parents worked in a defense plant. They were products of the Depression, and I'm sure I bear the scars of what they suffered in the '30s and '40s.
I married and had children, then went on to school, reversing the usual order of things. Finally graduated from Sacramento State College and began teaching English in Lodi, a small California town between Stockton and Sacramento.
It's a heart-breaker, this business of teaching high school English, I don't care what Frank McCourt says. So after twenty years of it, I retreated to Oregon to write about how it is in a Central Valley school. Sort of like Willa Cather moving to New York to write about how it is on a Nebraska farm. You must create some distance.
Gradually, though, life in a coastal village has become my focus. My stories and articles have appeared in numerous publications including newspapers, as well as The Gregorian, the Eugene Register-Guard, Newsweek, Playboy (well it was only a joke, but it was a good one), Oregon Coast Magazine, Northwest Travel, Creative Woman, Portandia Review of Books, West Wind Review, The Future of Oregon, Evergreen, Word, and in The Space Between, a journal I co-edited.
My 1998 novel, Northport, Stories of the Coast, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, explores how it is to find that perfect spot, then try to live in it. Some succeed, some don't, victims of that "wherever I go, there I am" syndrome --- the average tenure in Yachats is seven years. I've been here going on eleven years, so maybe I've made it.
3 Development Initiatives
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C A M O U F L A G E
a Mother-Daughter Relationship
Then Under the Camouflage, the unforgettable memoir of a woman covering decades of experience, should leap to the top of your "must read" list. Sheila Evans' mastery of the English language is surpassed only by her honesty in sharing a story that reminds us—we are not alone.
Like thousands of Southern Californians, I'm a product of the defense plant culture. I grew up in Burbank during both hot and Cold War years when Lockheed Aircraft called the tune. My parents, diplaced from their Midwest roots by the Depression, worked at the plant, which was next door to our house, so close that during World War II we existed under its camouflage netting. My father worked graveyard shift, and drank; my mother worked days, and nagged. In between they fought. They married and divorced each other three times. My alcoholic father was always packing and unpacking; my melancholy mother sobbed into her hankies.
READER COMMENTS: *
"Sheila Evans is a great writer. The (Oregon author) has pulled together a poignant, funny, moving recollection of her difficult relationship with her mother and a strained, Cold War relationship with an alcoholic father . . . I loved this memoir and hated it, too, for the emotions it stirred up. But I couldn't stop reading it."
Waldport, Oregon
. . . Sheila Evans' style of writing is wonderful . . . poetic, wise, terse.
I appreciated the fact that the author could touch so much emotion in me without subjecting readers to sentimentality. Her characters were so real, so rich and so interestingly complex!
Patricia was a narrator one could identify with — intelligent and yet compassionate. I hope this author plans to keep writing and gracing the world with the powerful messages she conveys through the word."
Associate Professor, School of Social Work
University of Michigan
Coast Impressions
Introductory Offer: $12.50 (US Currency)
List Price: $14.95
ISBN 0-9710988-1-6
My 1996 novel, Maggie's Rags was set in a small town resembling the one I live in.
Introductory Offer: $12.50 (US Currency)
List Price: $14.95
ISBN 0-9710988-1-6
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