The Outskirts of Normal

The Outskirts of Normal

Debra Monroe’s new book ” The Outskirts of Normal” tells about her abusive childhood in South Dakota and how she hip hopped all over the country searching for a better life. Looking for her dreams in unworthy men and bad marriages. Then, there’s the part about running away from her abusive husband, buying a little house in Texas and adopting a daughter she had always wanted. Debra gave her child the name she had saved for twenty years, Marie. When she adopted Marie she hoped to be a good mother. Debra said, she first woke up to see if the baby was still breathing then to being the mother of a black child.

Cover of Source of Trouble

Marie was African American and in the small Texas town she knew raciest remarks would be made, but doesn’t dwell on it. Debra said she has that covered but it took her forty minutes to put Marie’s hair in pigtails which flared away from her head as fierce as a Seminole Indian. She now takes Marie to a Beauty Shop. Debra’s own mother was an alcoholic who hit and went from an abusive husband to a worse one. Debra was the first in her family to finish high school and went on to earn a doctorate. She had been married twice, both abusive men and thought it was the norm. Debra said she dated men she met in bars and hardware stores and her “weirdometer never went off.”

When the crisis comes it has to do with the parenting skills Debra never got. Debra is afraid that she has never learned to protect herself from harm. Now in her desire to protect Marie she looks back on her past searching for clues. If Debra can figure out why her mother stayed with an abusive, alcoholic husband maybe it will serve to prevent her and Marie from doing the same. In the story Debra shares how she became the mother she herself needed so she could bring closure to her past and begin to live a fulfilled life.

Debra Monroe teaches in the MFA program in Texas State University not far from where she lives with her teenage daughter. She has written four other books of fiction. Her collection of short stories “The Source of Trouble” won the Flannery O’Connor prize.

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