Extraordinary An Average Life

If you happened to miss reviews published this past Sunday by local reviewers, here are excerpts from each. You can still find copies of the Sunday Pilot wherever The Virginian-Pilot is sold.

From The Sunday Break 2.7.2010

EXTRAORDINARY AN AVERAGE LIFE A trove of Sara’s letters is treasure to the daughter who pieced her life together

“Finding Sara -  A Daughter’s Journey” Margaret Edds Butler Books. 280 pp. $15.

By Keith Monroe Special to The Virginian-Pilot

MARGARET EDDS is familiar to longtime readers of this newspaper as a fine reporter and editorial writer and as a respected expert on Southern politics. Now she has written a moving account of her search for a mother she barely knew. Sara Barnes Edds was born in Tennessee in 1915 and died there in 1950 when her daughter was barely 3. This book recounts that brief life and in the process recaptures a lost world. “Finding Sara” was made possible only by the discovery of several troves of letters, the sort of material every family historian yearns for. When Margaret was a teen she found the love letters her mother and father exchanged before they were married but when they were separated by World War II. She sneaked peeks as a girl but never let her father know. She recovered this word hoard only after his death, 40 years later. About the same time, the letters meticulously preserved by Sara’s favorite sister, Eleanor, also came into Margaret’s hands. After years of trying to ignore the vacant place left by her mother’s death, she now had the leisure, the maturity and the means to fill in some of the blanks and to recover a life as told in Sara’s own words.

To read the full review – pick up a copy of Sunday’s Virginian-Pilot

Keith Monroe, a former Virginian-Pilot editorial page editor, lives in Greensboro, N.C.

Margaret Edds speaks at noon March 17, Virginia Festival of the Book, www.vabook.org

Also, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Feb 24, Prince Books, Norfolk, (757) 622-9223 and 1 to 3 p.m. Feb 27 Page after Page Elizabeth City N.C. (252) 335-7243

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