Product Description

From the award-winning author of Change Me into Zeus's Daughter comes this compelling memoir about a single mother determined to break the patterns that she has been taught.

Barbara Robinette Moss grew up in the red clay hills of Alabama, the fourth of eight children, in a childhood defined by close sibling alliances, staggering poverty, and uncommon abuse at the hands of her wild-eyed, charismatic, alcoholic father.

In Fierce, Moss looks at what happens when a child of such a family grows up. At once poetic and plainspoken, Moss, a "powerful writer" (Chicago Tribune), paints a vivid, moving portrait of her persistent quest to reinvent her life and rebel against the rural indigence, addiction, and broken dreams she inherited from her parents.

With warmth, insight, and candor, Moss tells the poignant story of finally leaving everything she knew in Alabama to fulfill her ambition to become an artist. It is an odyssey filled with gritty improvisation (bringing her son, Jason, to her night job to sleep on the floor), bittersweet pragmatism (filling her purse on a dinner date with shrimp, rolls, and even a doily, to bring home to a waiting eight-year-old), and staunch conviction and pride (chasing a mail carrier down the street to defend her use of food stamps).

As with many other children of alcoholics, the legacy of her father's alcoholism catches up with Moss, and an abusive relationship -- an inheritance and addiction of its own sort -- threatens to destroy all that she has accomplished. But as Moss learns to cope with her anger and pain, parenthood helps her discover true strength.

Ultimately, Fierce is a warm, honest, and triumphant story, from a writer celebrated for her Southern lyricism, about a woman determined to make it on her own -- to shrug off the handicaps of her childhood and raise her son responsibly and well.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #180522 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Moss does what you'd expect from a visual artist: she paints pictures with her words. As with her first memoir, Change Me into Zeus's Daughter, she uses the painful stuff of her life—an alcoholic father; numerous abusive husbands; continual, exhausting poverty—and turns it into chilling, visceral imagery. Recalling a day in her tumultuous childhood when her father shot the family pony in a rage, she writes, "Then I saw it, clear as a bell—the tractor dragging the dead pony through the freshly plowed soybean field behind our house. The wet, red mud guttered on either side of the pony like a wake left by a boat." She mercilessly braids the gruesome beauty of images like this with a hopeful message: survive. But beyond surviving, Moss creates. She holds fast to her dream of becoming a visual artist, no matter how impractical a notion it is for a woman from a working-class background. Even more moving, she doesn't become an artist—or a writer for that matter—who transcends and leaves her beginnings behind; she carries them with her, puts them on canvas and paper and exhibits them for the world to see. Admittedly, there are times when the rhythm feels a bit off, but even Moss's lack of pacing feels like part of the erratic whirlwind that is her life.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
In this follow-up to her highly regarded childhood memoir, Change Me into Zeus's Daughter (2000), artist and author Moss traces her determined footsteps from her rural Alabama home to Sarasota with her 8-year-old son, Jason, in tow. Leaving her abusive second husband, she finally follows her dream, at age 27, to attend art school, paying the bills with an evening job in the school's photo lab with Jason nearby in his sleeping bag. Her next destination is graduate school in Des Moines, chosen both because of a scholarship and because it was farthest away from yet another violent man who stalks her every move. Interspersed throughout Moss' engaging narrative are details of her frequent trips home, where she grew up with eight siblings, a nurturing mother, and an alcoholic father. Embellished with details of her brother's alcoholism, her father's suicide, her destructive relationship with a schizophrenic artist, the second-class treatment she received because of her welfare status, and her mother's faith and encouragement, Moss' struggle ultimately yields uplifting testimony to tenacity and familial love. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Compelling and frightening. [Moss] shows a rare talent for locating captivating images and building startling anecdotes around them." -- The Washington Post

"Heartbreaking, rough, raw. Captures the author’s journey from being a victim of chance to becoming a fighter for happiness." -- Elle magazine

"Heartfelt. Leaves readers hoping that a next volume of Moss's life story will record the rewards of her admirable courage." -- Francine Prose, People magazine

[Moss's] writing and her sense of herself make [her] life beautiful. Her memoir is a work of art." -- New Orleans Times-Picayune

Customer Reviews

Beautiful story of a life
*****
This book is the memoir sequel to "Change Me Into Zeus' Daughter". Although it could easily be read alone, I found it was an incredible experience to read it after reading the earlier memoir. Knowing the background of the author's childhood from the first book adds richness to the already rich second memoir "Fierce".

Although both books describe very difficult life experiences, they are far from depressing; they are about the triumph of love and the human spirit. I cannot imagine anyone having had a more troubled or abusive childhood than did the author, but the central theme of family love is what ,most affects the family members and holds them together above all.

I read this book as slowly as I could to make it last. It was just so good. I can't imagine anyone buying it and thinking they didn't get more than their money's worth, as it delivers on all levels---style of writing, suspense and plot, authenticity and transparency, the ability to draw you into the author's world.

"Fierce" takes place mostly after the author is an adult and leaves home although there are many flashbacks to childhood. "Change Me Into Zeus' Daughter" is about the author's childhood. I would buy both books together in hardback and save them forever to be read again and again.

*****

A Riveting follow-up to 'Zeus's Daughter'
When I first read "Change Me Into Zeus's Daughter," I immediately wanted more from memoirist Barbara Robinette Moss. In her follow-up "Fierce," she does not disappoint.

"Fierce" is Barbara's story of leaving all she knew behind to pursue her dream of becoming an artist. Every step of the way, childhood demons haunt her: her charismatic and alcoholic father, staggering poverty and abuse, broken dreams and rural indigence. Men with whom she has close relationships fight demons of their own, Patrick with schizophrenia and brother Stewart with alcoholism. Her childhood memories wake her at night, but Barbara never loses focus of what is most important - her only son Jason and a better life for both of them.

As with "Zeus's Daughter," the author successfully sets the psychology of time and place. We can see the pony tangled in barbwire and the father's shot at close range. We are there when Stewart wrestles with an angel, and we rejoice when Barbara, like Einstein the cat, defies the pull of gravity.

"Fierce" - simply put - is unforgettable. Barbara's story not only inspires, it is a life-affirming testament to the human spirit.

A Roadmap for Transcendence
The details in Barbara Moss's books may be particularly hers, but the story she tells really belongs to all of us: For none of us escapes suffering and, with remarkable skill, Moss's writing gives eloquent voice to our suffering as well as hers, and then (this is the real accomplishment!) shows us what it means to persist, prevail, and finally transcend it.