North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both, by Cea Sunrise Person
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North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both, by Cea Sunrise Person
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Sex, drugs, and . . . bug stew? In the vein of The Glass Castle and Wild, Cea Sunrise Person’s compelling memoir of a childhood spent with her dysfunctional counter-culture family in the Canadian wilderness—a searing story of physical, emotional, and psychological survival.
In the late 1960s, riding the crest of the counterculture movement, Cea’s family left a comfortable existence in California to live off the land in the Canadian wilderness. But unlike most commune dwellers of the time, the Persons weren’t trying to build a new society—they wanted to escape civilization altogether. Led by Cea’s grandfather Dick, they lived a pot-smoking, free-loving, clothing-optional life under a canvas tipi without running water, electricity, or heat for the bitter winters.
Living out her grandparents’ dream with her teenage mother Michelle, young Cea knew little of the world beyond her forest. She spent her summers playing nude in the meadow and her winters snowshoeing behind the grandfather she idolized. Despite fierce storms, food shortages, and the occasional drug-and-sex-infused party for visitors, it seemed to be a mostly happy existence. For Michelle, however, now long separated from Cea’s father, there was one crucial element missing: a man. When Cea was five, Michelle took her on the road with a new boyfriend. As the trio set upon a series of ill-fated adventures, Cea began to question both her highly unusual world and the hedonistic woman at the centre of it—questions that eventually evolved into an all-consuming search for a more normal life. Finally, in her early teens, Cea realized she would have to make a choice as drastic as the one her grandparents once had in order to save herself.
While a successful international modeling career offered her a way out of the wilderness, Cea discovered that this new world was in its own way daunting and full of challenges. Containing twenty-four intimate black-and-white family photos, North of Normal is Cea’s funny, shocking, heartbreaking, and triumphant tale of self-discovery and acceptance, adversity, and strength that will leave no reader unmoved.
North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both, by Cea Sunrise Person - Amazon Sales Rank: #21536 in Books
- Brand: Person, Cea Sunrise
- Published on: 2015-06-23
- Released on: 2015-06-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .79" w x 5.31" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 352 pages
North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both, by Cea Sunrise Person Review “Think your family is weird? Cea Sunrise Person slept in a tepee in the Canadian Rockies for most of her childhood, then by age 15 was modeling in Paris. Her memoir, North of Normal, retraces her unique path.” (Cosmopolitan)“Her account of this Alice-in-Wonderland life is rendered with…grace, and without self-pity.” (Elle)“North of Normal contains so many jaw-dropping scenes it makes Jeannette Walls’ childhood (The Glass Castle) look almost conventional.... [it] illuminate[s] family relationships that juxtapose love with torment, and illustrate the power of forgiveness.” (Toronto Star)“A former international model charts her unconventional childhood in the 1960s with a hippie-ish family.…Written with stylistic clarity and studded with family photos, Person’s lucid memories present a stirring scrapbook.” (Kirkus Reviews)“Accounts of early childhood are tricky—too many details and it’s impossible to trust the writer’s memory—but Person navigates the challenge with real grace. Her clear-eyed memoir captures her family’s quest and its collapse without bitterness. ” (Boston Globe)
From the Back Cover
Determined to abandon civilization for a hand-to-mouth existence in the wild, Cea Sunrise Person's charismatic grandfather Papa Dick uproots the Person clan from suburban California to the forests of Canada in the late 1960s, when she is just a baby. Together with her teenage mother, Michelle, Cea will spend the next decade of her life living in and out of canvas tipis with neither electricity nor running water, at the mercy of fierce storms, food shortages, and an array of grown-ups more interested in having a groovy time than in parenting a child.
For Michelle, though, one crucial element is missing: a man. When she strikes out to look for love, spinning from one boyfriend to the next, Cea is forced along for the ride—and into a harsh awakening. Consumed by a desire for a more normal life, she begins to question both her highly unusual world and the hedonistic woman at its center. But the escape she finds, through a career as an internationally successful model, brings its own challenges.
Shocking, heartbreaking, yet often funny and infused with warmth toward her damaged family, this riveting memoir of growing up off the grid (amid multiple generations of dysfunction) describes Person's journey to reclaim her life on her own terms.
About the Author
Cea Sunrise Person, now a happily married mother of three, supported herself from age thirteen to thirty-one as an international model, working primarily in Europe. She lives in Vancouver.
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Most helpful customer reviews
29 of 30 people found the following review helpful. The author's name says it all By AmazonJavaJunki As soon as I saw the author's name I knew this was going to be a terrific book...why? Pure and simple recognition. I was also the product a barely 15 yr old hippie mother with a string of lovers, absentee father, drugs, hippies, drugs, sex, drugs, crime, drugs and mental illness and did I mention drugs? For the children of those who fully embraced the best and worst of the hippy lifestyle and all the craziness that went with it, life can seem foreign even within your own nation. The idealistic intent which never quite lives up to expectation, the poverty and hardship, the extreme reactions to living on the edge and the ability to take absolutely insane situations in stride is a story I know all so well. There is something reaffirming about reading the experiences of others who "get it" but perhaps more importantly, this is a story about resiliency. It would be too easy to blame the mother, who was a victim herself, it would not do justice to the situation to portray it as just another crazy family although clearly mental illness was a very real factor...what makes this story so excellent is the authors ability to realize the positive aspects of her clearly unorthodox upbringing, sort through the rhetoric and pick out the factors that make for self determination and strength.I do not know the author but kudos to you for having the strength to tell your story...in the effort to find and hold on to that much desired "normal" the temptation to never look back is all too real. Despite moving far away from the craziness of early life and upbringing, it takes a great deal of bravery to do what you have done. Family resents your quest for a better/normal life and others simply have no idea where you are coming from.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful. Surviving an unbelievable hippy youth By Herblady22 Cea Sunrise Person was born to a 16 year old mother and was taken with her mother, and aunts by her Grandpa Dick to live in the wilderness. Grandpa Dick was a charismatic unconventional character who had no problems with browbeating others into his nudist, pot-smoking foul mouthed, free-love lifestyle. The story opens when 5 year old Cea gets up to use the open-air "s*** pit" then peers into her aunts' teepee where she finds that the noise she hears is her aunt doing "the screwing thing" with a visiting man whose girlfriend had apparently taken off. She is feral, without school, underwear or any sense of social deportment. Her mother, after a series of badly chosen lovers would eventually find a con-artist to live with and they went on a spree of his breaking into summer cottages and ripping off equipment with their reluctant participation. When he breaks his back her mother finds other men, one of which tries to sexually abuse her- something that her mother sees through blinders: her daughter should grow up without sexual repression and not be afraid of her urges (not that she felt them.) When she goes back to live with Grandpa Dick, now in the Yukon, he insists on nude yoga, seeing her desire for privacy as shame. By this time she has gone to school, discovered that her lifestyle is far from normal when her schoolmate is in shock at being introduced to a topless mother smoking a joint, and she dreams of normality. Not until she lies about her age (13) and scores a modeling contract with some financial assistance of her birth father, and tries calling her stoned mother from Paris, does she accept that she will never get real mothering.The book is well-written and honest.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. "Never derailed by fear" By BookAce "I was fifteen years old. I had created my own life and now there would be no one stopping me." "I had become everything he " (Papa Dick) "despised". So states Cea when a daring, resourceful plan to find a modeling job in Paris, works out exceptionally well. And although I realize that she was VERY happy to put her past behind her, it WAS her past that enabled her to have the survival instincts and very wise frame of mind to get her where she was now.Cea began her life living a hippie/survivalist lifestyle in a hand-sewn Tipi with her dysfunctional mother, her survivalist grandfather and grandmother, in a nudist free-love pot-smoking atmosphere, learning how to hunt, fish, survive in the wilderness -- and once she was old enough to realize what was going on around her, learning what SHE wanted -- And DID NOT want (especially her mother's free-loving boyfriends some of whom hit on her and more.)I see that some of the reviewers did not like the nudity, profanity, pot-smoking presented in this book, but as someone who grew up in that "Hippie Era", and had no problem with naked people around me waking thru Central Park or dancing at an outdoor concert, where the air was thick with THAT smoke - and as someone who studied Survival courses and had more than their visits to pit toilets, outhouses and "walks through the forest", it was really just part of life. Of course I had a more stable (but also dysfunctional) family and home to go back to once my weekend adventures were over. So in a way I vicariously lived through the pages of this book and could relate to much of Cea's early narrative.I had nothing but admiration for Cea's wise-beyond-her-years attitude, and how she put up with everything not only in her home with her family, but with what she encountered in Paris -- not all of it fun.....or worth remembering. But as she said, after hanging up on her mother 5,000 miles away -- "I had dealt with it"...."I was absolutely fine, without her" But was Cea really fine? The past eventually catches up with her in on horrifying morning when she wakes up, discovers she had vented her anger at Papa Dick on a boyfriend -- and did not remember a thing.Not only a VERY caring therapist, but then a discovery about her father, a call to her mother, and a few years down the line, a visit with homeless man who practically all but channels her grandfather Dick. This is ENORMOUSLY RICH reading.Inn small way, this book reminded me of another book I recently reviewed "Gone Feral" -- both very good books about a girl growing up living off the land, to be a woman who confronts and works with her past.And as for the advice on the final page, the love that goes around comes around-- thank you Cea, for passing it on to a stranger.
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North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both, by Cea Sunrise Person
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North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both, by Cea Sunrise Person
North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both, by Cea Sunrise Person
