Peeing on Hot Coals

This can't-put-it-down coming of age memoir is dramatic and heart wrenching, as young Patsy Lou takes us on a journey through the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma and Texas at the time of our nation's greatest environmental disaster. You will keep reading to find out what more could happen to this sweet child of the Great Depression after she endures severe burns down there at age seven when she pees on hot coals and suffers a type of genital mutilation as a result. Patsy Lou grows up listening to scary sermons about The End of the World and being thrown into a lake of fire for the least infraction of guidelines set by evangelical zealots. And with it all, her delicious sense of humor is evident throughout Peeing On Hot Coals. We laugh at Auntie Maud who weighs her four hundred pounds on the cotton gin scale and uses a hand painted stop sign so she can cross the road. Patsy's preacher dad and her stern Mama are straight from the Bible belt. Mama doesn't even wear a wedding band believing that Self- adornment is against the will of God. We are transported to a time when girls marry young and their hopes and dreams are not considered. "Whither Thou Goest I will go, Thy people will be my people, thy God my god." Mama quotes to Patsy on her wedding day. From such humble beginnings and with little formal education Patsy Lou's motto of It Can Be Done instilled in her the fearlessness to find love after divorce and to found an international peace foundation for which she received the United Nations Peace Messenger Award and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. But perhaps most of all, Patsy Lou learns to love the girl she was and to appreciate the woman she is.