One Step Ahead, A Memoir by Vivian Francis

Longtime WESPAC member Vivian Francis, a retired NYC high school art teacher, will be reading excerpts from her memoir on Thursday, October 3rd at WESPAC at 7pm.  If you would like to read her book before then, please contact the office for a copy.

Sheila D. Collins  has written a review of her memoir: “What happens when an artist whose heart and eyes are drawn to the exuberance and diversity of nature is locked into a marriage with an emotionally stunted abuser?  Vivian Francis seemed to have it all – two adorable children, a wealthy husband, money to go to the opera, the ballet and the museums, a luxury apartment in Manhattan, trips to Europe and finally, a large house on four acres in Luxembourg.

In this memoir, Ms. Francis chronicles, in a series of searing scenes, the dissolution of her marriage.  Mirroring the fairy-tale like setting of her home in Luxembourg is the fairy tale she had concocted about her own marriage…In a scenario that uncannily traces her parents’ escape from the Nazis, she takes her two young children and, on the heels of her pursuing husband (probably damaged by his early experience in a concentration camp) and his lawyer, flees the country.”