Theresa Patnode

In Gratitude to My Guardian Angel Theresa Patnode

Theresa Patnode opens the door to a simpler, more balanced time in America,reflecting upon her life growing up on a farm, vividly reliving her detailed memories as a ten-year-old girl living in the New York State Adirondack Mountains in the 1930s. Theresa reflects the conflicts of living on a farm in searing poverty with eleven siblings in the cold unforgiving North Country with her guardian angel as a source of comfort. Few today have experienced the many scenarios Patnode relates in a starkly realistic manner. Some of those experiences include family struggles on their Ellenburg, New York farm with inclement weather ruining crops, rodent infestation, snow clogged roads as she helps with barn chores, learns basic catholic ideologies in her local church, dresses freshly killed chickens to eat, helps can fresh tomatoes, goes to school in a one-room schoolhouse without running water and attends fun school picnics. In Gratitude to My Guardian Angel portrays stunning details of a historical time in the United States, a time that was simpler and more basic than the fastpaced, constantly escalating quest for faster and more sophisticated technology in the age of the new millennium.