When Miss Ruby marries Paul Oscar, she is 14 while he is 26, and the country is in the middle of the Great Depression. As the reader may guess, this is not the healthiest foundation on which to begin a marriage. And yet, despite alcoholism, violent fights, wrenching poverty, and occasional health and financial disasters, they manage to sustain that relationship for over forty years and raise two sons to adulthood together.
THROUGH OUR OWN WRONG EYES: A Story of Hardship and Redemption is the story of how they survived, with both tragedy and triumph. From the perspective of an ordinary American family, it's a fictionalized but true-to-life historical epic that traces through pre-World War II to the tensions of the Cold War. All the while, it shows the impact of choices (both global and personal) on people’s everyday existence.
Author Florence D’Angelo doesn’t flinch from the damage done by Paul’s alcoholism; by the power imbalances in their relationship that left Ruby scrambling to adapt whenever Paul decided to upend their lives for a new opportunity; or by the isolation, poverty, and physical and emotional hardships they endured. D’Angelo also doesn’t hesitate to show, with sympathy but without sugarcoating, the scars left on their sons’ childhoods and adulthoods by their parents’ fights and flaws.
This isn’t a grand, romantic love story. There are real tragedies here—constraints that denied Ruby the education and choices she deserved, leaving her trapped and isolated; that kept Paul struggling to make a living and fighting his own addictions; that left their sons struggling with their own relationship issues and searches for meaning. But THROUGH OUR OWN WRONG EYES also conveys their stubborn refusal to give up on themselves, on each other, on their family, and the hard work, faith, and devotion with which they build a future together. It helps that the author's prose is clear, straightforward, and evocative—illustrating the characters’ feelings and temperaments through their actions as much as their inner thoughts: “The walls were up and he was installing a window. It didn’t seem to want to fit into the opening, but she knew he would make it fit or die trying.”
There’s a lot to wrestle with here, and no easy resolution to make everything all better. In the end, the resolution is the journey itself: the quest for meaning, purpose, and shared love.
Florence D’Angelo's THROUGH OUR OWN WRONG EYES: A Story of Hardship and Redemption is a quiet historical epic about suffering and strength. Both heartbreaking and life-affirming, it does not flinch from showing the damage its characters do to each other—even as it also shows the enduring, unreasonable, devoted love that sustains them.
~ Catherine Langrehr for IndieReader