Not all of us nonetheless see our childhood houses regularly, and many people by no means see them in any respect besides in reminiscence. Some recollections we cling to love security blankets, and others we want we might bury beneath the world’s tallest trash heap.

Generally these recollections are little greater than a tangible object. I’ll always remember the carpet that stretched throughout our kitchen ground, its Seventies-era floral sample absorbing each liquid we dropped onto it. My alcoholic father as soon as knocked a container of pickled beets onto it and screamed at my mom, blaming her as she knelt to sponge up the darkish crimson juice.

How shortly a reminiscence of a easy object can carry us into one thing a lot deeper.

In her memoir, Son of a Hen (Etruscan Press; April 2025), Nin Andrews writes, “‘The previous is gone and you may’t get it again,’ my father at all times stated. However I wish to inform him, you’ll be able to nonetheless go to.”

In her e book, Andrews makes a chronic go to to the Virginia farmhouse of her childhood, the place she grew up along with her mom, father, and a number of siblings. She shares her story by means of prose poems, the proper alternative for weaving collectively a sequence of recollections that usually linger round one easy object or second in time. Every chapter makes a charming micro-story by itself, however collectively, they turn out to be the haunting spine of a life the creator remains to be making an attempt to piece collectively and perceive as an grownup.

“Son of a chook” was what Andrews’s Black nanny known as her when she’d been naughty. Whilst she paints loving portraits of her nanny by means of poetry, the white-skinned Andrews wonders whether or not her portrayal of Miss Mary is racist. “Don’t point out your Black nanny,” her father used to inform her, “or folks will suppose you’re a spoiled brat, a modern-day Scarlett O’Hara.”

Andrews’s dad and mom typically scolded her about revealing an excessive amount of of herself to others. They held tight to their very own secrets and techniques — her father, a closeted homosexual man; her mom, an undiagnosed autistic girl. Andrews’s dad and mom took the thought of privateness to harmful ranges. She remembers her mom hissing, “don’t inform anybody else” after Andrews talked of seeing Dying frequently crouching within the nook of her room. When Andrews struggled along with her personal psychological well being circumstances and suicidal ideations, her dad and mom advised her she didn’t want skilled assist and even barred her from getting it — not wanting others on the town to know their enterprise.

Andrews’s present for writing poetry makes every of her recollections, regardless of how massive or small, gentle up the web page. The childhood Andrews within the opening poem footage her older self “as an previous girl trying again or down, like an owl swooping over the fields of the previous, recollections like scared mice scampering by means of the grass.” On the evening as a baby when Dying visited her desires so vividly that she thought she had died, Andrews “walked to the window and noticed the total moon flooding the fields and hills as if every thing had been wearing a bridal veil.” Every line reaches out and tugs on the soul, threatening to understand the threads of forgotten recollections from your individual childhood.

The one downside with Son of a Hen, as with many good tales that you just by no means wish to finish, is that it’s too quick. Andrews invitations readers into her childhood dwelling and divulges the intimate tales that finally ship her right into a mental-health spiral as a teen and younger grownup. However then, after 133 pages, she closes the door once more simply as she’s beginning to get snug with the reader spending time inside.

Andrews has explored her story in a number of codecs and books earlier than this one — a great signal that she’s doubtless not performed telling this story, both. Till the following chapter, readers fortunately have an album filled with vivid snapshots of Andrews’s childhood dwelling, one which she — and readers — will always remember.