Building Solid: A Life in Stories

In frank and emotionally rewarding stories, a woman recalls her life from a feminist, Jewish, and largely humorous perspective. Her stories and her prose are delightful and sometimes hilarious.

Each one is a lovingly curated memory. She has an ability to write like a bright child thinks and feels. The variety of her life's experiences allows her to formulate insights that many people would enjoy. A fulfilling, cheering, and comforting book overall, describing (the kind of) wisdom that only time can impart!

Joan writes about both coasts: a childhood among post WWII refugees in Manhattan, and then leaving her family for college, marriage, a commune, and art school in Portland, Oregon.

She shares some of the pivotal events and decisions involved in ultimately leaving Portland for Seattle, through a second marriage and the raising of two sons 23 years apart, all the while creating original sculpture and drawings.