Molly's Daughter: A Three Generation Story Exploring What Do Women Really Want?

Molly's Daughter, the novelized memoir of one family, deals with the eldest daughter of three generations of women, each on the turning edge of social change. Part I opens in September 1918 in Butte Montana, a hotbed of Union-organizing in the copper mines. The Great War in Europe has ended. Although women did not yet have the vote across the States, Jeanette Rankin from Montana had been elected the first woman to Congress in 1916. Women in Montana could live with a remarkable degree of freedom. Packy Shea's only daughter, Molly, 14, is helping her brother prep his newspapers for delivery when they are startled by a loud, ominous crack sound coming from the Conn Mine. The Gallows frame cable has broken, the lift fallen a mile down into the deepest shaft in Butte. Before the end of day Lizzie, their mother, will know she is a widow. In the next few months she makes a series of decisions--not to return to England, not to accept an offer of marriage, not to accept the widow's pension but instead to take a job as a hotel chambermaid, and temporarily to place her sons in an orphanage and to allow her daughter to take a job caring for the children of one of the mining bosses' families. The resulting story of strong opposition and shifts between mother and daughter takes the reader into vividly drawn social and economic realities of Butte's people and levels of social enclaves told from the point of view of its women. Lizzie is a competent mother, but her sons and daughter are not her whole life. She has a talent for making friends, a lifelong passion for Little Theater, a gift for fortune telling, "reading the cards," and an ability to make the best of bad situations. Her daughter Molly sees the shadow side of her mother s actions and learns the value of a strike to bring about change Part II begins in San Francisco during the last of the Roaring Twenties, and continues into the deepening depression after the Stock Market Collapse. Molly has come to San Francisco with her school friend, Trudy, a classic bad-girl, confrontational, difficult to live with, irreligious, unconventional, generous, good humored everything Molly is not yet the person who understands Molly and will NOT be thrown out of her life.The outer story of Part Two includes the drama of the formation of the ILWU the International Longshore and Warehousemen s Union and the great waterfront and general strike of 1934, which shut down the city of San Francisco and won their victory. The inner story is a tale of Molly s relationships what does it mean to be close yet not possess, or be possessed? An affair develops with the physician Chel Eaton she meets when she sprains her ankle, during a dance chorus try-out, and is taken to the port emergency hospital. Chel refuses to marry her when she becomes pregnant. She marries Hans Strutner, a longshoreman and German immigrant, before she gives birth to her daughter, Lizby. Her relationship with Hans is complex, and gradually completes her life, although he continues to mystify her.Part III continues to develop the complex character of Molly, primarily seen through the eyes of her daughter, Lizby. This segment begins with a wedding in Molly and Hans flat, much in the style of James Joyce s The Dubliners. John, the third of Lizzie s five sons is being married and we gain a clear picture of each family member and the spirit of the times as they interact and tell stories. Lizzie takes pride in her thread of English ancestry, but her sons are clearly Irish. Patrick will soon leave as an American volunteer for Spain where the Spanish Civil War against the Fascist government of Franco has begun. Pat, a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, is wounded at Brunete and returns to Montana. Molly and her children, Lizby and Frank are also there when Pearl Harbor is attacked and WWII begins. Molly returns to SF but suffers an over whelming loss with the death of Trudy. Molly felt no boundary between them except life itself. A substantial part of herself feels gone. She struggles alone with depression and bouts of rage that occasionally irrupt at Lizby. One, however, causes her to send her daughter to Lizzie in Montana, as unmanageable. In Part IV, the turning edge of social change is no longer connected to class issues of labor, but a variety of revolutions against institutions, against the Vietnam War, and for civil rights, for women s rights and the sexual revolution. Vatican II s redefinition of church as the people, not the institution has evolved from liberation theology. Lizby s life becomes inextricably entwined with all of these matters, but particularly with the immense changes taking place in psychological research and theory. The outer story is of her personal relationships, and study with mentors who were making history in this field. From the pragmatic and irreverent psychoanalyst Eric Berne, who defined psychology in terms of Game Theory, to psychiatrist Mike Agron who researched the brain impact properties of psychedelic drugs LSD, mescalin and psylocybin to Joseph Wheelwright, her analyst and physician-founder of the Jungian Institute of Depth Psychology, to its somewhat disreputable cousin the Guild for Psychological Studies psychologists Elizabeth Howes and Sheila Moon use alchemy and astrological metaphors openly, that make establishment academics uneasy to UCMC s training program in SAR--Sexual Attitude Restructuring, to the Enneagram mystical teachings of the Sufis adapted to contemporary useage by Claudio Naranjo and Helen Palmer. Lizby studied all of the patterns and drew her own conclusions, putting them into books and teaching. The inner story of Part IV includes Molly s death and the legacy of questions Lizby inherited, her own marriage, divorce and learning from love, friendships, and an inner stand-up comic sub-personality from her unconscious who emerges to help her deal with the unimaginable.