In the third and final installment of her memoirs, Catherine Gildiner is coming of age in Coming Ashore.
Gildiner writes about her formative years as a child in Lewiston, New York in Too Close to the Falls, followed by an account of life in the civil rights-charged 1960s in After the Falls.
In Coming Ashore, Gildiner writes of her launch into adulthood.
“The first book is about leaving childhood and the second book is about leaving adolescence and this one is about becoming an adult,” said Gildiner, who splits her time between Creemore and Toronto. “It’s really about all the things that happen to you that make you into an adult.”
She said, like most people, she can’t remember everything that happened in her life but certain experiences are etched in her mind.
“I think that people have personal growth moments, moments when you actually have some clarity in your life and they stand out really vividly,” said Gildiner. “A memoir is whatever gets filtered through your unconscious. Your unconscious changes things, I know that and I don’t even worry about that.”
Coming Ashore begins as Gildiner leaves her parents’ home and heads for Oxford University in England.
Gildiner said she wrote letters to her mother, which she saved.
“Of my three memoirs this is the only one of which I actually have a record,” said Gildiner.
She said she had completely forgotten about some of the stories she had written about in the letters, including a very hilarious recount of the author going through a post office window on a bicycle.
Gildiner’s misadventures continue with a run in with a herd of mountain goats and tracking down Jimi Hendrix.
The book spans seven years in three countries, landing Gildiner at graduate school in Toronto, which she said was the best time of her life because of the time she had to dedicate to her studies while doing a PhD.
“I’m locked in a tiny office all day long with Darwin and Freud,” said Gildiner, a clinical physiologist. “I thought it was wonderful. It was the only time in my life when I got to say, what makes the world work?”
She said being able to be on the outside of the real world, looking in, an adult who hasn’t yet entered the real world.
“To me, that’s the best time of my life and I thought it was everybody’s best time but it wasn’t,” said Gildiner.
The book ends when Gildiner is married at the age of 27.
She said she now turns her attention to writing fiction as her husband and sons have forbade her to write about their lives.
In 2005 Gildiner published the novel Seduction. All three of her books are best-sellers.
There will be a book launch in promotion of Coming Ashore at the Avening Hall on Saturday, Oct. 18 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Gildiner will be interviewed by radio personality Terry O’Reilly at 5 p.m.
She will also read from the book, take questions from the audience and sign books.
Admission is free.
Coming Ashore is available at Curiosity House Books in Creemore and online.
The book, released Oct. 1, is published by ECW Press.