New Releases by Janis Thomas Cramer

When my husband tiptoed into my yoga class that morning, I knew something serious had happened. Jerry told me my 94-year-old mother had suffered a stroke. The assisted living center had called an ambulance to take her to the emergency room. When we arrived, she didn''t know who we were. She didn''t know who she was. The next day we called hospice and moved Mother into our house. This book details the anguish, lessons, and joy we experienced caring for this tough woman the last five months of her life.

Growing up in a family of storytellers, Janis Thomas Cramer spent Sunday dinners with the Thomas clan in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where she heard family lore begging to be retold--stories of the Depression, of six sons fighting in World War II, and of a tornado''s destroying three family homes. She lived fantastic stories of her own as well, with two brothers and an army of cousins and friends from Riverside School. In the early Sixties, she endured teenage angst with other Baby Boomers crowding into Alice Robertson Junior High School during the New Math, the Race for Space, and the President''s Physical Fitness Challenge. “Growing Up Thomas” carries the reader with Janis through some captivating vignettes of her young life.“Come along with Sweetiepie in the Rocket 88. Meet some real Okie characters from the last century. Scratch your head. Laugh out loud. Shed a tear. Be a kid again.” ~~Bill Lehmann, author of "An Okie from Muskogee Recalls Growing up in the Dirty 30s."