conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Hungarian, American, WWII with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Literary?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Long Journey Home'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a description for a book titled The Long Journey Home about Arts, Rehabilitation, Counseling with the genre: Self-Help, Motivational?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author earned the Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, the Master of Arts in Rehabilitation Counseling, and the Doctoral degree in Rehabilitation. She has served as a counselor educator for twenty-seven years and engaged in a private practice serving the community. She has conducted international workshops on Responsive Multicultural Counseling, Wellness, and Volunteerism.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a description for a book titled The Long Journey Home about Historical, Jack, span>A with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: <span>A colonial historian and member of the Quaboag Historical Society and West Brookfield Historical Commission, awardwinning author the author has always been fascinated by American history. He began researching the battles of King Philips's War and was amazed by what he found. He decided to bring history back to life through the eyes of Jack Parker, a young orphaned boy from Ipswich, and his passage into adulthood during a very dangerous and frightening time. The result was The Devil's Elbow (Indian Rock Publishing, 2013), which won an honorable mention in the juvenile fiction category at the 2013 New England Book Festival. the author's newest book, The Long Journey Home, continues the story with Jack Parker's capture and escape and his brutal trek home through the winter wilderness to the wife and son he loves beyond measure, so together, they can find the one place that is truly home. A graduate of Holy Cross, the author lives in Warren, Massachusetts with his wife Barbara.</span>
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: </span>. He began researching the battles of King Philips's War and was amazed by what he found. He decided to bring history back to life through the eyes of Jack Parker, a young orphaned boy from Ipswich, and his passage into adulthood during a very dangerous and frightening time. The result was The Devil's Elbow (Indian Rock Publishing, 2013), which won an honorable mention in the juvenile fiction category at the 2013 New England Book Festival. the author's newest book, The Long Journey Home, continues the story with Jack Parker's capture and escape and his brutal trek home through the winter wilderness to the wife and son he loves beyond measure, so together, they can find the one place that is truly home. A graduate of Holy Cross, the author lives in Warren, Massachusetts with his wife Barbara.<span>A colonial historian and member of the Quaboag Historical Society and West Brookfield Historical Commission, awardwinning author the author has always been fascinated by American history.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Long Journey Home
  Around the time he was twelve or thirteen, Earnest Junior did something so terrible that it drove the family to move from Spartanburg to Columbia. Mother said that once Uncle Earnest was about to tell her what doctors at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore had said after examining Earnest Junior, but Aunt Bama burst into the kitchen at that moment and screamed that he was to never say anything to anyone about Earnest Junior again. I suspect Daddy knew the whole story but wasn't about to reveal to me any more about Earnest Junior than he would reveal about his and Aunt Bama's other sisters, Bessie and Kate.
  My cousin Peyton, Uncle Frank's younger son, claimed that his father and mine used to wash their hands after reading letters from Bessie and Kate, both of whom had been in the insane asylum in Milledgeville. One had died there; the other got out and married. When I asked Daddy for more information about these women who were my close blood kin, he would just shift his eyes from mine and refuse to answer. Daddy and Uncle Frank had basically disowned those two sisters.
  But Earnest Junior couldn't be dismissed with a quick shift of Daddy's eyes. He was too physically and persistently present. For some years after we moved from The Old Home Place to the new house up the street, Aunt Bama, Uncle Earnest, and Earnest Junior would come to visit and stay in the large room that had been built for Granddaddy, who was dead by then. In time, our family grew larger and took over the guest room, making it necessary for Aunt Bama's family to rent a room at a motel at the edge of town when they visited.
  It was a great relief to Mother to have my aunt out of the house for good as an overnight guest. Still, Aunt Bama and her family continued to have some Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners with us, as well as other dinners on their all-too-frequent trips to Georgia. Aunt Bama continued to fuss about Daddy's mishandling of money, incessant smoking, and constant complaining about being at death's door while refusing to go to a doctor.
  Aunt Bama was also full of complaints about Mother's cooking. "This Jell-O has a peculiar taste to it," she would say, poking tentatively with a fork prong at a quivering lime-green blob. Or she would push her almost empty plate away, announcing: "I can't eat any more of this food, Louisa. Something's just not right about it." Livid, Mother would do everything she could do to pretend that my aunt wasn't there in her dining room at all, that the irritation was nothing more than a gnat that had slipped in through a snag in a window screen.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is two more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I again remembered the weekend at the beach house, and my humiliation at unbuttoning Judy's blouse. I'd revealed a part of myself that I had denied, rationalized, or buried all my life. I remembered how the young and ailing Edmund Tyrone had loved the way the fog hid him from himself and the world, but the fog in my own life was growing thinner and thinner.
  I spent a large part of my life in the struggle to become a painter. My effort had raised questions and conflicts, confusing and frustrating me. When I wasn't painting but filling my days with cooking, sewing, knitting, gardening, reading, and being mother to my two sons, I wondered why I ever put myself through the inevitable emotional pain of trying to be a painter. When I was painting, the process itself felt like life to me, no matter how poor or ineffectual the final product.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: When I was painting, the process itself felt like life to me, no matter how poor or ineffectual the final product. I'd revealed a part of myself that I had denied, rationalized, or buried all my life. I remembered how the young and ailing Edmund Tyrone had loved the way the fog hid him from himself and the world, but the fog in my own life was growing thinner and thinner.
  I spent a large part of my life in the struggle to become a painter. My effort had raised questions and conflicts, confusing and frustrating me. When I wasn't painting but filling my days with cooking, sewing, knitting, gardening, reading, and being mother to my two sons, I wondered why I ever put myself through the inevitable emotional pain of trying to be a painter.I again remembered the weekend at the beach house, and my humiliation at unbuttoning Judy's blouse.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last four paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I don't know why he chose to imagine me telling him about John's and my wedding, but he did, including a false account of my emotional state that day. I felt upset at how he portrayed Lucille, the black woman who worked for my family until I was thirteen years old. I was especially offended by the way Chris said she talked. And she would never have added rum to the punch served at the wedding reception, for mine was not a drinking family. I certainly didn't think the day of my wedding would be the happiest day of my life, as he wrote, and my friends never told me that I should go to New York City and become a model or an actress. Perhaps Chris wrote about the mother he wished he had.
  Whether Chris's memoirs are fact or fiction, the stories he's written about his survival have inspired many young people with troubled childhoods to believe that they too can survive and succeed in life. For this I am grateful. Sometimes troubled parents and young people write to me at my website for support because of Chris, and I'm grateful I have had the opportunity to be of help. I send him love and wish him well as he continues to live his gifted and extraordinary life.
  I am deeply grateful for the supportive friendships of Dee Waterman, Marilyn Zelwian, Alaina Beach, Mary Jean Devlin, John Hapeman, Pat Bega, Debra Yaffee, Peg Robbins, Kathy Crane, Ruth Gallagher, Maija Meijers, June MacIvor, Mary Julia Richter Coons, Rita Larrow, Brian and Piyali Summer, Delores Culp, Dennis Helmus, Anne Plunkett, Clifton McCracken, Charles Lewis, Henry Lyman, and all of my PCAs over the years.
  I'm grateful to my cousin Margaret Rushin Anderson, who became my friend after we met at my fourth birthday party. We were close friends until we graduated from high school and Margaret married and moved to Germany, while I began my freshman year of college. We became close again in 1984 and continue to be close. I am grateful not only for Margaret's emotional support as I spent so many years looking back at my life, but also for all the rich conversations we had about our past as I wrote about it, and our present lives as we continue to experience them.