Going Home: A memoir by Joanne Bertelsen Barnett

GOING HOME is my story of growing up in Wayland, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, in the 1960s and 1970s. The mirage of an idyllic and upright community is shattered by the reality of dark societal forces fueled by greed, alcohol, and lust. Adultery, Molotov cocktails, and midnight drug raids collide with a world of tutus, horses, and elite ballet training in Yugoslavia. The perfection of my family’s ＂Leave it to Beaver＂ façade smashes against the angst of multiple car crashes, electro-shock treatments, and death. The tumultuous and divisive times of the Vietnam War, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement are the omnipresent forces that fanned the cultural stresses of decadence and deceit prevalent in my experience growing up. The memoir is both a story of my life and a clear historical record of life in Wayland during this period. Reflecting over the past 66 years, much in the town has changed dramatically. But the essence of the town’s natural beauty with its pervious connection to the perpetual cycles of seasonal magic has become a powerful touchstone of where I am from and where I am going. I am blessed to have grown up and to be growing old in Wayland, Massachusetts.