Synopsis---
Nutterville is a remarkably compassionate and tender memoir written by Social Worker Faye Ellen Kufahl, who had the experience, as a young girl, of seeing her older sister stricken by the disease of paranoid schizophrenia.
Kufahl also recalls stories of her childhood in a rural area, and what it was like overcome odds that were not exactly in her favor. Growing up during the 1950s with neither running water nor an inside bathroom is described in a humorously sly, ya-gotta-laugh-for-crying style, as is her education through the eighth grade at one of Wisconsin’s last one-room schoolhouses. She invites you to share it all with her, as she makes discoveries and triumphs over the roots of ignorance and pain.
Her “adventures” in the second half of the book take the reader to life inside a shelter for abused and battered women, where Faye found herself at age 55.
These stories are a candidly optimistic, dealing with family dynamics on a subject that is often taboo in our society to discuss openly. Nutterville neither begins nor ends on a negative note---Faye weaves stories that are seductively alluring, having the power to change reader’s hearts. Her journey is bound to become a thread woven into the fabric of many lives and homes as she spins her tale of love between sisters.
Nutterville will empower readers to fight against the stigma and isolation that may happen in struggling with a mental illness. No one should be alone; it takes a society to cope---let us work toward making it so. That is the clear message of this book.
Excerpt - Chapter 5
Mysteries in the Basement
One summer, a neighbor brought over a chicken hawk that had a broken wing. My brother Tommy was, informally, the neighborhood vet. He was given the hawk because no one else knew what to do with it. Tommy took care of it for almost an entire year. I was approximately four years old when we shared our basement with this large chicken hawk. I had a fascination and hatred for that hawk 100 percent of the time. I never came to a complete peace with this thing that lived freely in our home. It scared me and thrilled me all at the same time.
Each day, Tommy took care of the hawk by taking raw meat and placing it at the bottom of the basement steps for the large bird to eat. Then, this four-and-a-half-foot wingspan of a bird would swoop down from the top of the woodpile, soar to the bottom of the stairs and eat. Each time a human would go downstairs, this bird would swoop down in hopes of food. You can imagine how scary this was for me. I was terrified and thrilled at the exact same moment.
That summer and winter, I lived in anxiety of that hawk. It was a unique situation. No one in our home really thought much about it. There were no discussions of what to do about it. No one in the community even seemed to really think it odd to have a wild hawk flying free in our basement. It was just the way it was...
