Overview

Suddenly, I thought: There must be some other way to be married. This powerful epiphany underpins Schackel's journey from a 1950s teen wife and mom living through second wave feminism-a cultural tremor that would shake up the way women in the 1960s and '70s viewed their lives and identity. The author married her teenage boyfriend and gave birth to their first child before she graduated high school. At a time and an age when youngsters typically dream of their destinies, Sandy's focus shifted automatically to her husband's and children's futures. Like many women, her future-her identity-became obscured. This memoir paints her long and difficult journey toward recovering what was lost and restoring her full sense of self, and the crucial element of her continuing education in helping her succeed.

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Reviews

""Schackel's memoir helps us understand how feminism can slowly emerge in a traditional, teenage marriage. We are quickly caught up in the tensions of a restrictive marriage, being a devoted mother, and perpetual setbacks to her pursuit of identity, equitable love, and liberation through education. The writing gives us a vibrant experience of her journey of awareness, pain, and redemption. Chapter titles are songs of the decades, and they capture both the times and her emotional mindset; the author's inner voice echoes through the music. With the unembellished perspective of a historian, the memoir then shares how education and feminism shaped a new lens. She confronts herself and her culture, inexorably outgrowing the life created by a 1950s marriage and ultimately achieving her dream of a professorship in history. Sandy's journey is heroic. This book will help any woman take one more look at life and ask: Is this truly where I wanted to go?"" -Jan Salisbury MS, MCC, Executive Coach, Salisbury Consulting ""Schackel's memoir is a coming-of-identity story steeped in history.... This compelling memoir is a mighty testament to survival in a patriarchal culture clinging to its dried-up existence."" -Suzanne Sermon, Adjunct Professor, Boise State University

Author Information

Sandra Schackel grew up happily in a small, Midwestern town. Marrying and becoming a mom at age seventeen shaped her identity over the next three decades. Education proved to be the lifeline enabling her to reclaim her own dreams. She retired in 2010 as Emerita Professor, Boise State University, where she taught American Women's History and History of the American West for twenty-one years. During this period she published on twentieth-century women's lives, including Working the Land: Stories of Ranch and Farm Women in the Modern American West, based on oral histories from women in six Western states. With Apron to Gown, she moved from recording other women's journeys to writing her own life story. Today she hikes, bikes, skis, and thrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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