Boot Language: Voted one of best memoirs to read in 2018!
From the outside, Vanya’s childhood of riding horses with her father in the solitude of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and attending flamboyant operas with her mother in the city looked idyllic. But life for Vanya turned dark when ghosts from her father’s service on a Pacific destroyer in World War II tore her family apart. Vanya coped the only way she knew how, by immersing herself in the beauty and solitude of the wilderness around her.
Radio Interview with Kim from WVFM in Grand Rapids, MI
Vanya shares how and why she came to write Boot Language, shedding light into her harrowing childhood and how she learned to cope with memories that come out of nowhere like stray bullets. Included are survival tips for people suffering from childhood trauma.
Watch the Boot Language Book Trailer
Reviews
“Vanya seamlessly weaves tension and lyrical beauty into every scene, playing my emotions as a reader perfectly. The result is a fantastic read. Buy this book today.”
— Laura Davis, best-selling author of The Courage to Heal
“The truth is that this book is brilliant. The arc of the book is fabulous, written in Ms. Erickson’s wonderful, spare style. One of the best memoirs I’ve read in a very long time.”
— Brooke Warner, editor and publisher, She Writes Press
“It’s always a supreme pleasure to be shaken by the emotional earthquake of a master storyteller. Vanya Erickson is an original.”
— Susan Brown, PhD, publishing James Joyce scholar + writing coach
“A young girl’s loyalty and love are tested to the extreme by her abusive alcoholic father and a distant Christian Scientist mother. A coming-of-age story for anyone who has ever looked for love in all the wrong places.”
— Nancy London, best-selling co–author of Our Bodies, Ourselves
“Overall, the author vividly captures her parents in this memoir, paying special attention to telling how her father’s volatility created heart-pounding anxiety. . .There’s particular poignancy in later chapters. . .”
— Kirkus
“Erickson’s real gift is her utter honesty and clarity about pain and evil in this world and each if their intersections with love.”
— Sheila Coonerty, PhD, psychologist, Bookshop Santa Cruz family
