THE TASTE OF ANGER

Parnell’s memoir follows a family as they move to a farm in the early 1960s and endure their patriarch’s extreme abuse.

In 1962, the author’s abusive father, Richard, moved the family from the city to 2727 Swamp Road, a run-down farm in western New York. When the family arrived at Swamp Road, the house was shabby and rat-infested, with an outhouse for toileting. While keeping his factory job, Parnell’s father ran the farm himself, justifying his actions with a continuous tirade about milk fees and city expenses. Parnell’s mother, Rose, constantly retching with morning sickness, turned a blind eye to the abuse the children bore as they took on physical labor that their bodies were too young to handle. Between beatings, the children attended school and completed their chores, bruised and, at times, nursing broken bones. Defeated by poverty and neglect, the author and her siblings lost hope. Finally, the abuse grew so extreme that Rose and her children made their escape. Parnell writes from the perspective of her younger self; this child’s-eye, first-person perspective gives a unique shape to the narrative: “We sleep on the bare wooden floor during our first night in our new home because my father is too tired to put the beds together. I lay awake long after the others, grateful for his snoring, which punctures the quiet and absolute blackness of the farmhouse.” This account is chock-full of heartbreaking memories, bravely mined by the author as she details the psychological impact of chronic abuse upon children and families. She also highlights the meager medical and legal support available to victims of abuse during the 1960s and the 1970s. Readers may wish for an epilogue describing what happened to Parnell and her family members in the years following the events depicted here—the author and her siblings were not yet living when they endured the privations of the Swamp Road farm.  They were surviving.

This courageous memoir illustrates the catastrophic and isolating impact of abuse upon families.