Ah, faithful reader, if you have made your way through the trilogy of my autobiography and are still here, you will find that I am continuing my story in this fourth volume. This last is about the ramifications of all that came before as I continue my journey living here in East Hampton; I promise that this is the end of this saga, and if you have not read the first three, I am hoping that this book is able to stand on its own. The first three volumes encompass two failed marriages and finally the third successful one. I have tried to contain the tale within the actual task that is the writing of this memoir. The story is entwined with complicated memories of my children peppered by loss, retribution and alienation; its background is my art and art career and the ongoing feminist movement, my search for spiritual awareness, success, peace and true love. The first volume begins as I await my grand seventieth birthday celebration a reunion with my seven children that never happens; it proceeds to describe my childhood in the Bronx and Queens in New York in the forties and fifties, meeting Steve Heffner, through the end of my first marriage to him in the sixties; when the marriage became intolerable to me, I forced the issue, probably in some regard a good choice - too little too late - however the divorce triggered undeniably awful events. Book II is about my second marriage, to Eddie Cortes in Puerto Rico towards the end of the Age of Aquarius, and the resulting fallout. The first two books tell of these marriages and the massive, obscene custody battle that ensued after my divorce from Steve and subsequent marriage to Eddie, the damage that was done to the children and to me not only by Steve and the custody conflict but by the bizarre seemingly invisible machinations that surrounded it and the spreading chasm between mother and child; Steve is the father of my first six children, Eddie is the father of the seventh and youngest. The third book tells about survival and a new beginning with Joe Ferrante, my third and forever husband. And yet in the midst of joy and success, inevitable stumbling blocks and choices continue to present themselves, their inescapable consequences continue to accumulate and become lost in a forlorn and aimless mathematical progression leading to nowhere but catastrophe. I try to describe the series of books with a metaphor; the writing of the story is like a clothesline, and the different parts of this saga hang on it like so many handkerchiefs and pieces of underwear. I begin with a momentous birthday and work backwards, following the thread of the effort to complete this story of dreams and successes, loss and alienation...
About the Author: Mark Twain said, "Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that crushed it." Forgiveness, however, is a complex matter, whether you are the one seeking forgiveness or the party who considers himself to be aggrieved. In the realm of family relationships made more complicated by human failing and life's happenstances, forgiveness may not be a realistic or attainable goal. How does all of this impact the lives of the people involved? I grew up in the Bronx and Forest Hills, New York in the forties and fifties. I am the mother of seven grown children and a total of thirteen grandchildren and have been married three times, the last one is a keeper. I have been an artist for over fifty years, have owned schools and art galleries in the Hamptons, a gold coast area at the tip of Long Island; I have been president of the Southampton Artists' Association, Vice President of the Jimmy Ernst Alliance before it became the Artists' Alliance of East Hampton, was editor of both the SAA and AAEH newsletters. I have studied law, been a paralegal, an advocate, an activist. I have exhibited and sold my artwork internationally and have spent the last little while completing my autobiography. Presently I live with my husband and three rescue dogs in the middle of North West Woods, East Hampton, New York, where I enjoy my garden and working on new art projects in my studio. For as long as I can recall I have been an artist. I received all manner of instruction since I was a child, from the MOMA to The Art Student's League to Pratt Institute, and plenty of private lessons in between. But my avocation always was writing, maybe because my parents both wrote and my mother was an English teacher in the New York City School system. The years have been filled with a mad variety of events; it has been a long eventful journey. Here's the thing. In the midst of my lifetime full of the creation of art and homes and gardens, there were other things, traumatic and joyful, mostly monumental, that occurred. Originally, I kept journals as a record of events. Ultimately these journals morphed into a memoir and then an autobiography. It became so long and complex that I was forced to divide it into three then four separate books. And here they are, all four of them, available for you to read.