North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both

North of Normal by Cea Sunrise Person is a highly recommended memoir of growing up in the 70's in an unusual family.

The full title of North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both really tells you what Cea Person's life was like growing up off the grid and in a family where free love, free thinking, and drugs are the norm and common place - even when the norm isn't necessarily what is best for everyone, especially children. The poor parenting goes back to her grandparents, FYI, although her mother, Michelle, should have been shaken and told to snap out of it and grow up.

This memoir is one of those that convinces me that not everyone should have children or have the "right" to raise a show more child simple because they procreated. While you will read this and applaud Cea's ability to overcome her background and survive, even thrive, many will, like me, ask what toll did her childhood also cost her. And also many will, like me, realize that this story of one person's success doesn't mean all the other neglected children out there will have the same fortitude to overcome an awful childhood.

So, while this was an engrossing memoir, it is also a nerve wracking. Michelle was so poorly equipped to be a parent and, quite frankly, clueless and stupid, that young Cea is lucky she escaped being sexually abused. Many of the ideals embraced by her mother and grandparents ultimately proved less than noble or endearing as they were lived out in reality. I really wondered if there was something more going on, perhaps some mental health issues with the grandparents that were also present in Michelle, Cea's mother (and certainly proven in her uncle Dane).

Much like Jeanette Walls The Glass Castle, North of Norma is a compelling memoir - even while it infuriates you.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of HarperCollins for review purposes. show less

Cea Sunrise Person had a difficult and unusual childhood. She spent her earliest years living in a tipi in the Albert wilderness with her extended family. Not only were they back-to-the-earth, free-loving, counterculture hippies, but they practiced what they preached with an intensity that drew others to them for lessons in wilderness survival. Then her mother moved on, and Cea was subjected to an itinerant life with a string of her mother's boyfriends. At the age of thirteen, she left home for New York City and a career as a model. By fifteen her career had taken off, and she was living in Europe by herself. After circling the drain in a different but also destructive lifestyle, she finally began to come to terms with her family, her show more childhood, and her own choices.

Inspired by Jeannette Walls' memoir, The Glass Castle, Person wrote her story over a seven year period from a place of stability and with the clarity of hindsight. Told in a narrative style with childhood conversations and incidents supplied in part by relatives, this is not an autobiography, but a story of her life. Like The Glass Castle and Tara Westover's Educated, her life was a string of narrowly avoided catastrophes brought on by dysfunctional parents. But, like them, she escaped her upbringing and became successful. Whether it's akin to rubber-necking at a train wreck or due to a sense of relief at avoided horrors, there is something about books like these that are mesmerizing. I enjoyed this one in particular because I didn't get the sense that she was sensationalizing her story and the included photographs document her words well. show less

In a sentence, this is the memoir of a woman who was raised by hippies in a tipi in winters of forty-below, who went on to be a fashion model in New York and Paris.

Her story really starts before she was born, when her Korean-war vet grandfather married her outdoor-loving grandmother. He was a forest ranger for a while, but that was too conventional, and they dropped out, learned to live off the land, ignored culture's rules, smoked a lot of pot, and eventually ended up at a house in central California that was a magnet for other hippies. By this time they had four teenage kids, including the author's mother. The kids dropped out of school and hung out at the house smoking dope and having sex with whomever was around. Cea's mother got show more pregnant with her at age 15 and was married briefly to the father.

By the time Cea was born in 1969, her father had left, and the family had moved to Canada to "escape the man." They lived in a tipi in the wilderness of the Kootney Plain. Her grandfather, Papa Dick, developed a following of other hippies who he taught how to live off the land. The rampant pot smoking, free love continued. Cea and her mother travelled between Alberta and various areas of BC, sometimes with her grandparents, sometimes with the mom's current boyfriends, sometimes just the two of them. Most of the book is their harrowing and heartrending stories in this era. They eventually made it to the Yukon, were the grandparents have settled their latest tipi. Mom couldn't handle the lack of men in the dating pool and took off for Calgary, and Cea spent the forty-below winter cuddled under bear skins with the wind howling around her.

Throughout this all, her mother and grandparents express a great deal of love to her, but in reality were narcissistic, irresponsible, selfish and neglectful guardians lost in a haze of pot smoke.

When she was 13 and living with her mom in Calgary, Cea lies about her age on a modelling application. She is soon signed with Elite Models, and moves by herself to New York City. She works as a model in New York and Europe until she is 31. Now in her mid-forties, Cea is married, has three young children, and lives in an upscale suburb of Vancouver.

Rating: Highly recommended. 4.5 stars, maybe even 5. Very readable, although some of the neglectful vignettes from her childhood are heartbreaking and infuriating.

Recommended for: anyone who is interested in people, particularly people who lead very different lifestyles. Also, anyone interested in authentic hippie culture-- I think it's so long in the past that we have sort of this Hollywood nostalgic softened image of it. I think this story really appeals because she started out so disadvantaged and not only managed to make something of herself, but is articulate, empathetic, and intelligent.

I think I will recommend this to my book club. show less

This is a fascinating memoir of a child born to a 15-year-old mother and raised in the wilderness with her pot-smoking, free love grandparents, mother and aunts; and with a schizophrenic uncle who shows up from time to time. As the book opens, Cea is living in a tipi; her mother is addicted to pot and four-year-old Cea stops to watch her aunt having sex with a camp visitor on her way to find wood. That opening is a typical scene from Cea's life. Her mother finds various boyfriends, including a petty thief, a child molester and a married man and brings Cea away from the wilderness home she knows to live in various towns and cities. Cea begins to crave a normal life, with roots and friends and school.

We watch Cea grow to a young teenager show more and secure a modelling job with an agency. She moves on her own to New York, and then to Europe to work and support herself. After two failed marriages, she is still looking for a normal life...this is her story, told honestly and in a very compelling manner. It explores issues of mental illness and resilience. show less

Wow - talk about Glass Castle on steroids!! What a life story. I know that Cea has scars from all she went through, but once again, a memoir like this one shows how resilient kids can be. I will be reading her follow up book also!

The title is appropriate as it takes place in northern British Columbia and normal it isn’t. Cea Persons tells her life story from her childhood in a highly dysfunctional family to relative normalcy as an adult.
She is raised by a single mother and lives in her grandparents’ tent until her mother and Cea follow Karl for a couple of years. Then they live with Barry and then some other guy.
Grandpa Dick and Gramma Jeanne aren’t exactly ideal family elders. They believe in living off the land, smoking pot, having sex with whoever is around and walking around nude in all types of weather. They sire four children all of whom have serious mental health issues including schizophrenia, substance abuse, nymphomania. Cea’s mother is the show more type who will always have to depend on a man for her survival as she has no known skills other than sexual pleasure.
As a teenager, Cea determines that it’s time to put this lifestyle behind her and with the help of her birth father, she is able to register for modelling school in Europe. She becomes a successful fashion model, has two failed marriages and finally finds a good man with whom to share her life and three children.
It’s a fascinating story and the fact that she was able to survive and escape from her family speaks volumes about her intelligence and her determination, show less

So harrowing and so readable. I just couldn’t put this down. Nice to read about a mother similar to my own, and the crazy stories that come from that. Wish there had been more written on her adult life and what it’s like to grow up the way she did and end up in West Van of all places, but still such a solid memoir and a great great airport book.