Join us as we talk with author Catherine Gildiner who at age 12 moved with her family from her Niagara Falls home to a Buffalo suburb, leaving behind a family business, small town contentment, and the rebellious childhood chronicled in her first memoir, Too Close to the Falls. While her uprooted parents struggle to adjust, Gildiner stumbles in making new friends and edging into puberty. Her restlessness and a fundamentally outspoken and argumentative nature regularly catapult her further than simple teenage trouble, and she frequently fails at the standard American girlhood, often with comic results. The conflicts between the narrator’s individuality and conformity propel her into her first relationship at the same time that the seismic shifts in American society, culture, and politics hit home with ever-increasing force. Tune in as she talks with us about her life and the experience of living in the sixties.
