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| Rosemarie, Age 2 |
This is a true story. There are certain events reconstructed from information furnished by the author’s few remaining relatives in Nova Scotia.
The story is based on a daughter’s struggle for acceptance and love from her mother, Lizzie, a mulatto servant girl. The father, a rich, white, married businessman, abandoned Lizzie and never acknowledged his daughter. Lizzie’s resentment, contempt, and lust for revenge threaten to destroy her illegitimate child.
Swamp Robin follows Lizzie’s daughter who is determined to survive her mother’s willful abuse. The author retraces her steps through her traumatic young life, reliving the few happy times and remembering her struggles through the bad. It tells how, from an early age, she cherished her grandparents who accepted and loved her unconditionally. She recalls longingly the periods when she lived with them, where each day was not a struggle for survival. She also recounts how these happy times were punctuated by Lizzie’s attempts to take her back and how her grandparents desperately tried to protect her from their own daughter’s abuse and her destructive lifestyle. Though she endured abandonment, loneliness, pain, and fear, these ultimately strengthened the author’s resolve to resist being a casualty of her mother’s deteriorating life. Her determination to prevail sharpened her survival skills, and, as an adult, stands her in good stead.
