There are people who can remember birthdays, phone numbers, and where they left their car keys.
Then there are people who remember a woman asking about a
gray cat and somehow ending up in a conversation about a gray hat.
Katherine Peirce-Burleson belongs firmly in the second
group.
Her new memoir, Word Puddles: My Life in Snippets,
isn't built around a single event or a dramatic turning point. Instead, it
gathers the stories that refused to disappear. Some are funny. Some are odd. A
few are unexpectedly moving. Most begin as ordinary moments and end somewhere
else entirely.
A childhood friend. A classroom full of students. A
neighborhood disagreement that took on a life of its own. A family story that
somehow survived fifty years. The book moves through decades this way,
following memory rather than chronology.
That approach feels fitting because memory rarely behaves
itself.
One recollection leads to another. A joke opens the door to
something more personal. A moment from long ago suddenly feels closer than
something that happened last week.
For years, Peirce-Burleson worked in education, as a
storyteller, an observer, and church member, spending much of her life around students,
stories, questions, and conversations. She developed a habit of paying
attention. Not just to important events, but to the details surrounding them.
The things people say when they aren't trying to be memorable. The
misunderstandings that become family legends. The moments that grow funnier
every time they are retold.
Those moments fill this book.
Readers will meet lifelong friends, family members,
neighbors, students, colleagues, church communities, and strangers who wandered
briefly into the author's life and somehow stayed there. Not because they
changed the world. Because they changed a day, a memory, or a story.
The result is less polished than many memoirs and all the
better for it. Life arrives here the way life usually arrives: messy,
unpredictable, amusing, frustrating, heartfelt, and occasionally impossible to
explain.
Word Puddles: My Life in Snippets does not
spend much time asking readers to admire a life. It simply invites them to sit
with it for a while.
And somewhere between the laughter, the memories, and the
people who populate these pages, readers may find themselves thinking about the
stories they still carry, too.
Filled with humor, reflection, and the unforgettable people
who leave their mark on a life, Word Puddles: My Life in Snippets offers a
heartfelt collection of memories that linger long after the final page.
Available now on Amazon.