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Carrying the Mummy
ISBN: 978-0-9885428-1-5 Size: 6 x 9 Author: Scott Wright Subject: Fiction Format: Softcover, 157 pp Pub Date: June 2015 Pub: SM Mindfulness Press $12.95 +$2.50 postage and handling |
Carrying the Mummy
After his family’s move to St. Paul’s East Side in 1954, George Peterson’s interest in science lands him a part-time job at the St. Paul Science Museum. His years at the museum, and especially his interactions with the broad spectrum of people he meets there, serve as a crucial part of his adolescent development.
During this time he also attends Cleveland and Hazel Park junior highs before moving on to Johnson High School, and it is at the latter that he experiences the first stirrings of 1950’s romantic love. As in the author’s earlier book, Of Snapping Turtles and Packing Plants, Carrying the Mummy combines creative nonfiction and memoir, humor, and cultural observation. The “historical notes” that appear throughout the book will bring back memories for many readers and provide new insights into St. Paul’s history for others. The museum where the young Scott Wright (“George” in this lightly fictionalized narrative) worked was one of those eclectic institutions where interests ranged from archaeology to zoology: yes, there really was a mummy to carry. The far-ranging curiosity of its administrators and curators was a perfect fit for the author, and in many ways this is the story of a young man discovering just how big the world could be. Carrying the Mummy retrieves the texture and the rituals of adolescence in postwar America—right down to the Studebaker in the driveway—but never indulges in “Happy Days”-style nostalgia. In the 1950s, there was little that was typical in the life of a typical American." |