Escape From Appalachia by Mary Frances Barron
Mary Frances Barron’s newly released memoir Escape from Appalachia: Who Will Rescue Me? is rich in area history, vivid in setting descriptions and compelling in its recounting of a difficult childhood. The audiobook version provides an immersive reading experience for anyone who would like to revel in the depth of Barron’s story. Told through the eyes of her curious and always upbeat younger self, Barron intermingles her own difficult family interactions with her parents’ histories and the graphic details of growing up in a tiny Pennsylvania town that has sadly evolved into “one more rusting relic of Appalachian despair.”
Point Marion, Pennsylvania is a town of 1330 people along the Monongahela River, one mile north of the Mason-Dixon line that separates West Virginia from Pennsylvania. Once a place with a successful coal and glass industry that attracted Ellis Island immigrants in large numbers, things have changed a lot by the time Barron is born in 1946. “With bleak surroundings and dried up industry the air and water were contaminated beyond imagination, and the people were dirt poor.”
Coming-of-Age in Pennsylvania
Neither of Barron’s parents comes from poverty. Her father’s family settled in the Point Marion area around 1780. His great-grandfather ran a solvent ferry business that ended in the 1930s when a bridge was built over the river. Barron’s father was able to attend Bucknell College in style, but the money ended there. Barron’s mother was born in Seattle, an only child who traveled the world with her college-educated parents and spoke conversational French. She went to Bucknell with plans to become a civil engineer and there met Barron’s father. They married, expecting that “the money they would have from their families would sustain them.” But they get nothing and do poorly at finding jobs and managing what scarce resources they have.
Barron launches the memoir with her earliest memory, a horrific moment on her third birthday when her father stands her up on the fireplace mantle above a roaring fire, rips her tattered hand-me-down dress off her body and throws the pieces into the fire. He then lifts her down and admonishes her for wearing torn clothes.
As the youngest of three girls Barron notes how with her birth her dad calls himself a three-time loser with three daughters and no son (one comes along later), even though just before her own birth he fathers a son —whom he never acknowledges — with another local woman. From early on Barron’s mother — miserable in Appalachia, estranged from her own parents and stuck in a difficult marriage — has a mantra for her children that never changes: “One day you kids will get out of here.”
Positive Influences and Feelings of Hope
Barron narrates her life in chronological fashion, with each of the novel’s sixty-three short chapters focused on the various people who influence her journey, be it a best friend or a teacher or a family member. Given the ensemble cast of friends and family in her life, the Afterword that wraps up the life story of each gives a welcome sense of completion and order to the story.
Barron’s precocious positivity — in the face of a father who devalues his daughters and an emotionally absent mother — feels refreshing and authentic, starting with how thrilled she is at age four and a half to get the afternoon session of kindergarten (since Mama is unable to get up early in the morning) and how she finds her new teacher to be “the nicest, most wonderful woman I had ever met.” Barron is named after her father’s best friend Francis “Happy Birthday” Diehl, a veteran from WWII. Happy Birthday remains a vibrant presence in her childhood, always with a wave and a greeting as she rides her bike or walks barefoot about town with her beloved dog. The pace stays high, with one shocking sentence near the end of the story that will make you wonder about the entire premise of her family story.
The gloomy tone of its title, Escape from Appalachia: Who Will Rescue Me? is a tad misleading because this is a memoir with little blame or despair. Barron’s creative determination to make something of herself shines through on every printed page and minute of the audiobook, showcasing the positive resilience of a young girl and her ability to rescue herself from a difficult life and a bleak environment to achieve her own stunning self-actualization.
About Mary Frances Barron:
Francie Barron is an award-winning serial entrepreneur who single-handedly escaped from the throes of poverty and the diminishment of her upbringing in the bowels of Appalachia.
Starting out with zero money, no encouragement, plain looks, and stumbling social skills, she has been able to deploy whatever she could manage to scrape together to catch the Northbound Train and lift her and her children out of poverty.
She has created over 20 profitable corporate entities and employed hundreds of people while educating herself with an undergraduate degree and then a master’s degree. She taught herself how to analyze and deploy factual data with hands-on grit and resilience. And made a career of looking for opportunities when none were obvious. She taught herself how to create abundance through stops and starts, horrible decisions and a few good choices. She currently lives in Las Vegas Nevada.
