Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

Welcome to Scandalous Women, Catherine! I can’t tell you how excited I was to read your new memoir AFTER THE FALLS. But I have to ask, how does a clinical psychologist suddenly become a bestselling author? Tell us about this metamorphosis. I am not so sure that it was a metamorphosis—it was more of an accident. I didn’t start writing until I was 50 years old. (I did write a psychological column for a magazine but it was not creative writing.) I had been a psychologist for 25 years. I was at a dinner party and a guest said that she felt sorry for her sixteen year old daughter who had to get a job and lose her childhood. I said that sixteen year old kids should be working. You can’t be a child forever. I worked at four years of age and it was good for me. On our way home from the dinner party my husband informed me that we would never be invited there again. The next morning the hostess of the party called me and said the story of my childhood working with the black delivery car dri...

AFTER THE FALLS: Coming of Age in the Sixties Catherine Gildiner October 28, 2010, 368 pages Viking Adult From the back cover: It's 1960 and twelve-year-old Cathy McClure has just been thrown out of Catholic school for-among other transgressions-filling the holy water fount with vodka. In the hopes of giving Cathy a fresh start away from their small town, the McClures leave behind Niagara Falls and the family pharmacy to start over in suburban Buffalo. But life in a subdivision and a school filled with "pubescent cheddar" holds little appeal for a girl who began working at four and smoking at nine. As the quaint world of 1950s America recedes into history, Cathy dives headfirst into the 1960s. Along the way, she adopts many personas with gusto-vandal, HoJo hostess, FBI suspect, civil rights demonstrator- but when tragedy strikes at home, Cathy must take on her most challenging role yet. As candid and compelling as Mary Karr's The Liars' Club and Jeanette Wa...