Storkbites by Marie Estorge
A memoir of a wealthy Louisiana family with nine children, a mother who swings between sobriety and drunkenness, and a young mother determined to break the cycle of abuse.
About the book
In her memoir entitled Storkbites, Marie Estorge shares the story of her wealthy, Louisiana family, including a mother who bounces from sobriety to drunkenness, kindness to vicious cruelty, an eccentric father who tries to protect his sons from death and his daughters from danger, and nine children, all struggling to survive their grim world. Storkbites is also a story of hope. It affirms the love shared by siblings and the enduring bonds created. Storkbites depicts the determination of one young mother desperate to break the cycle of abuse with her boys.
Told from two alternating timelines, Storkbites shows a childhood filled with abuse and material excess, and a troubled adulthood where Marie struggles to make her way in Northern California. Alcoholism, seduction, murder, insanity, and suicide overshadow Mardi Gras balls, Christmas celebrations, and a daughter's bittersweet coming-of-age. Rising stakes threaten to topple Marie as she strives to escape, yet understand, her mother's abusive madness. Thirty years later, she takes readers past the point of survival. Seeing her handprint on her son's back after having vowed to never strike her children, she realizes she must tame her own rage in order to end the legacy of abuse.
The juxtaposed timelines show the effect Marie's upbringing has on her decisions and choices, and how these choices contribute to the predicaments she finds herself in. Three-quarters into the memoir, when her mother lands in ICU on Christmas Day, the story then moves linearly until Marie is faced with the greatest challenge of her life -- to stop acting out of shame and to use love, rather than fear, to raise her sons.
About the author
Born in Lafayette, Louisiana, Marie Estorge now lives in Walnut Creek, California with her two sons. She completed her MBA at the University of San Francisco in 1990. She is currently an accountant for a local firm.
Marie divides her free time between writing, springboard diving, co-ed softball, volunteering, tennis, and helping her sons with their homework. She is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and has attended several writing conferences throughout the United States. Her writing has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, The Contra Costa Times, and The Noe Valley Voice. She is at work on a novel.
Since taking up diving at age thirty-five, Marie has competed in two national master dive meets. Her favorite dive is a back one-and-a-half somersault on three-meter. She plays softball every Sunday with the Sierra Club Singles and occasionally with the gang from Zyzzyva.
Archived from the Harris Literary Agency website. The agency's listing is reproduced as published, with contact details removed.
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