Drive Gently

My father's suspicious death, perhaps at the hands of a small town sheriff's department, forced my mother to flee our hometown--Idamay, West Virginia--a few days after he died in 1954. She was told that he'd hung himself in a jail cell in Fairmont, West Virginia, where he was being held for driving while intoxicated. She was afraid they would do something to her and leave us kids orphaned. Though we left Idamay, that town and our devastating loss followed us. My father's absence, though seldom spoken about, was "present" everywhere we turned. My mother never looked back. But when she died forty-two years later, his death came back to me in full force. I felt compelled to investigate further. I'd heard conflicting stories all my life. This book documents an investigation that yields more questions than answers for the seven-year-old survivor who has an insatiable need to know. This book is about this seven-year-old whose entire life was indelibly marked by this tragic loss that she experienced when she had just reached what is often called the age of reason. Her quest for the truth takes her to places she'd never dreamed she could go. Because there is so much she doesn't know, she finds herself leaning heavily on her imagination to help her to navigate this mysterious and fatherless world.