At the Cut

By Peter Anastas

Author Peter Anastas describes "At The Cut," his memoir of growing up in the fishing community of Gloucester, Massachusetts in the 1940's as follows: "In one sense I have written a memoir. But I have also attempted an archaeology of a childhood: the slow, careful, peeling back of the layers of self-deception and forgetfulness that obscure and perhaps even buffer the pain of discovering who we are and how we got to be that way. For we never truly survive our childhood, we merely spend a lifetime recovering from it."