Theodore Cohen Reviews Memoir "Bus to Brookhaven"

Bus to Brookhaven: and Other Recollections

Genre: Memoir 

AMAZON review and self-published book listing

https://www.amazon.com/Bus-Brookhaven-Recollections-John-Haven/dp/0692995315

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: John De Haven (August 4, 2018)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0692995315
• ISBN-13: 978-0692995310
• Five-Star Review

Reviewed by Theodore J. Cohen Originally for Amazon

De Haven has magically captured stories starting from when he was a very young man living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, through early adulthood, and beyond, in ways that are so enchanting you almost wish you were listening to him read them to you as an audio book. Particularly poignant are his memories of growing up in the Kenilworth Corridor near his boyhood home, near the train bridge that is so much in contention today. (As an aside, and as someone who is a few years De Haven's senior, I have to agree with his observation: how, indeed, did we ever manage to survive to adulthood, much less to our teenage years, being allowed to roam our neighborhoods unsupervised at all hours, given the many dangers presented by traffic, vermin, and other "threats"???! It could never happen in today culture, where parents hover like Black Hawks on the battlefield.)

In any event, in one story after another--all told in his unique, gentle manner--De Haven holds us spellbound as he reveals how he came of age, growing up particularly fast on an unaccompanied bus trip to Brookhaven, Mississippi, when he ends up, accidentally, in what then was a Colored-Only restaurant of the bus station in Memphis. What happened, and its impact on De Haven, say a lot about the boy, then, and the man, now.

This is a book you will enjoy reading, perhaps event twice. It is, in a word, a literary treasure.

Five STARS all the way!

SUBMITTED WITH PERMISSION BY

Carolyn Wilhelm Curriculum Writer and Blogger, Wise Owl Factory cwilhelm@thewiseowlfactory.com The Wise Owl Factory | Reminiscing Writers

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