Winging It

A "strikingly imaginative" (O, The Oprah Magazine) and heartfelt memoir for every woman on the verge of becoming an empty nester. 

In her critically acclaimed debut memoir, Still Life with Chickens, Catherine Goldhammer shared her recovery from the chaos of divorce: moving with her daughter Harper to a seaside New England town, renovating a rustic cottage, and raising six chickens. Winging It picks up when Harper begins her junior year of high school and Catherine suddenly realizes that both she and her daughter will be on their own in two short years. Like so many mothers, Catherine feels woefully unprepared for not only her daughter's independence, but also her own.

Yet as friends, ex-lovers, adventures, and opportunities emerge, Catherine begins to realize that her life will not end with her daughter's departure, but begin anew. With wit, charm, and candor, she reveals her journey of rediscovering herself through one of life's most universal transitions, including the lesson that letting go doesn't have to mean losing those you love.“Goldhammer is strikingly imaginative (she wryly enjoys the excitement—and denouement—of a fantasy romance as much if not more than a real one), deeply engaged with her friends, family, and her small menagerie of pets, and, finally, optimistic about what she gracefully presents as the opportunities of aging."—Valerie Monroe, O, The Oprah Magazine
 
“Second-time memoirist Goldhammer offers a small miracle of a book, slim in size but encompassing a multitude of revelations on motherhood and the empty nest. Witty and erudite, ranging over the vagaries of dating after divorce to shedding a reviewer's opinion of her as a 'suburban matron,' the author, along with her 16-year-old daughter, Harper, manages to meet the challenge of their inevitable separation with aplomb.”—Elizabeth Brinkley, School Library JournalCatherine Goldhammer is a graduate of Goddard College and was a poetry fellow in the fine arts program at the University of Massachusetts. She has been published in the Georgia Review and the Ohio Review.