Description

Alice J. Payne was born in 1935 in the heart of the Great Depression. If she had been a boy, her life would have taken a far simpler, far kinder path. If she had been a boy, her father would have loved her. Instead, she was, as her mother was, as her baby sister was, the target of her father’s volatile anger. When his violence erupted, Alice made her own safe spaces, her emotional caldera, in her Des Moines neighborhood and the city around her.

During her childhood years, Alice’s internal compass was forged. Along the way, benevolent employers, kind neighbors, and her mother’s unfailing love gave her the fortitude she needed to find her own way. Alice would need it all. Ejected from her home at eighteen, married soon after, a mother at nineteen, divorced at twenty nine, Alice’s path to age ninety was rarely straight or smooth. Her story, filled with wisdom and humor, is an account of self-reliance and triumph over adversity.