A Letter That Changed EverythingAfter her mother died unexpectedly in 2008, Susan read a letter her mother Floyce wrote that described a childhood she had never spoken about openly: poverty, abandonment, and years spent inside an Ohio children's home during the Great Depression. That letter sent Susan on a journey through family records, public archives, and living memory to uncover the woman who raised her.A True Story of Resilience and LossThe Line is a mother daughter memoir rooted in the working class American experience of Depression era Ohio. It follows Floyce Ilene Trautman from her earliest years in Akron during the Rubber Rush, through the devastating moment her family collapsed and she was placed in a children's home orphanage, through foster care, and into the remarkable life she built on the other side of all that loss. It is a grief and healing memoir that never loses sight of the love at its center.The Weight of an Inherited LifeDrawing on the American family history of two immigrant families who came to Akron chasing work and survival, The Line traces how childhood abandonment leaves marks that travel across generations. The intergenerational family story Susan uncovers is not one of bitterness. It is one of transformation. Floyce took everything that was done to her and turned it into fuel for giving.What She Left BehindWhen nearly six hundred people came to Floyce's funeral, many had never met her. They came for the people she had raised. This is the story of a woman who stood in lines to survive and then spent the rest of her life making sure no one around her ever felt that kind of lack again. The Line is a family history nonfiction account that reads like a novel and stays with you long after the final page.
