In the Shadow of the Cedar - A Memoir by Eileen McCartin Love tells the story of a girl's growing up within the gravitational pull of her family's ancestral home on Cedar Drive. The book is equal parts funny and poignant, and speaks to universal truths about self and family. Told in a series of lively vignettes, it is filled with wonderfully descriptive stories, sprinkled with period references, all played out in front of the rich tapestry of an Irish Catholic backdrop. An excerpt from the Introduction: For as long as I can remember I was always talking and storytelling. As early as second grade Sister Mary Harold promised the class that if our work was done on time Eileen would tell us a story. When the last paper was turned in I happily skipped to the front of the room, facing my classmates, swaying in front of the chalkboard ledge, spinning yarns that came to me out of thin air. In those stream-of-consciousness reveries, a cast of characters and adventures emerged that might include anything and anyone: eccentric neighbors, assorted relatives, lines from popular songs. Even saints and angels might turn up. But just as often I repeated the stories my mother told me of growing up on Cedar Drive. She often visited her girlhood memories, and if I had the good fortune to be close by when such a mood overtook her she might begin to speak aloud and I'd take in the stories which then became part of my own being. She would recount the old days, the names of friends, the nuns at St. Aloysius School, the stories of her crippled grandmother struggling to raise the houseful of children after their mother's tragic death. She would describe the fine house they lived in, her five high-spirited and mischievous siblings. She would recall with poignant clarity the rollicking fun times and the achingly sad times. Through these oral reenactments, it was clear that Mother had a powerful, almost mystical attachment to her girlhood home, and her mysterious connection to the place and the individuals associated with it was passed on to me. Curious, isn't it, how episodes from the past take up residence in our souls and shape the persons we become. The past never really unhappens. What you are about to read is not an autobiography, exactly, which would be a chronological account of an entire life. Rather, it is a memoir, which is a selective remembering of a particular dimension of one's life. This memoir, at its heart, is a story of two lives intertwined, those of a mother and daughter. As the daughter in this story, I lived under the canopy of my mother's lively memories from another time and place…it is a recollection of certain pivotal events in my life played out against the backdrop of the 1960s, interwoven with scenes from her life spanning the 1920s through the 1980s

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