By CJ Trent

Photo courtesy of www.npr.com

Gloversville, Maine’s good years are already in the past when Jean and Jimmy Russo’s only son Richard is born in 1949. Shortly after, Jimmy is gone, leaving Jean and Richard on their own in a tight-knit, oppressive town, one that is quite familiar to readers of Russo’s fiction. Jean is a scarily intriguing, attractive, hard-working, emotionally unstable career woman.  She feels she is meant for bigger and better things than life in Gloversville. Her own life has not met her expectations; she yearns for the chances she feels other people in other places have, and rails against the world, which has trapped her in Gloversville.

The book focuses on Richard as he learns to defuse and cope with Jean’s frequent meltdowns, and struggles with her extreme dependence on him.  He tells the story of their tangled lives with love, acceptance and wry humor.

This memoir tells the story of author his harrowing trip to a new life in Arizona, which is both funny and terribly sad. How many freshmen arrive at college with their mothers in tow?

Russo’s attempt to understand his mother and his past makes Elsewhere an honest and moving memoir of family and place. The story of how he balances her increasing needs with his career, and family, is both evocative and compelling.