The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts
Written by Tessa Fontaine
Narrated by Tessa Fontaine
4/5
()
About this audiobook
The Electric Woman is Tessa Fontaine's astonishing audiobook memoir about a life-affirming journey of loss and self-discovery. Narrated by the author, this audiobook recounts Tessa's life on the road with the last traveling American sideshow and her relationship with an adventurous, spirited mother.
Turns out, one lesson applies to living through illness, keeping the show on the road, letting go of the person you love most, and eating fire:
The trick is there is no trick.
You eat fire by eating fire.
Two journeys—a daughter’s and a mother’s—bear witness to this lesson in The Electric Woman.
For three years Tessa Fontaine lived in a constant state of emergency as her mother battled stroke after stroke. But hospitals, wheelchairs, and loss of language couldn’t hold her mother back; she and her husband would see Italy together, come what may. Thus Fontaine became free to follow her own piper, a literal giant inviting her to “come play” in the World of Wonders, America’s last traveling sideshow. How could she resist?
Transformed into an escape artist, a snake charmer, and a high-voltage Electra, Fontaine witnessed the marvels of carnival life: intense camaraderie and heartbreak, the guilty thrill of hard-earned cash exchanged for a peek into the impossible, and, most marvelous of all, the stories carnival folks tell about themselves. Through these, Fontaine trained her body to ignore fear and learned how to keep her heart open in the face of loss.
A story for anyone who has ever imagined running away with the circus, wanted to be someone else, or wanted a loved one to live forever, The Electric Woman is ultimately about death-defying acts of all kinds, especially that ever constant: good old-fashioned unconditional love.
Tessa Fontaine
Tessa Fontaine is the author of The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts, which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers choice, and a best book of the year by Southern Living, Amazon, Refinery29, and the New York Post. Her writing can be found in Outside, Glamour, AGNI, and The Believer. She has been a sideshow performer, a shoe saleswoman, and a professor, and she taught for years in jails and prisons. She cofounded and runs the Accountability Workshop with the writer Annie Hartnett. Raised among the redwoods of Northern California, she now lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her husband, daughter, goofy dog, and sassy cat.
Related to The Electric Woman
Related audiobooks
But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Home Is Burning: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wildcat: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Chocolate Money Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Normal: Sex, Love, and Taboo in Our Hyperconnected World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Girlchild: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stuff Mom Never Told You: The Feminist Past, Present, and Future Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHollywood Park: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Personal Effects: What Recovering the Dead Teaches Me About Caring for the Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Some Go Home Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEvergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Soundtrack of Silence: Love, Loss, and a Playlist for Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Last Will Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Barbara the Slut and Other People Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The First Ten Years: Two Sides of the Same Love Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hope Fights Back: Fifty Marathons and a Life-or-Death Race Against ALS Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lights out in Lincolnwood: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost Canyon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Summer We Read Gatsby: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Listen to the Marriage: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5If at Birth You Don't Succeed: My Adventures with Disaster and Destiny Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Came, We Saw, We Left: A Family Gap Year Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My Year with Eleanor: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Traveling with Ghosts: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Before You Go: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Every Kind of Wanting Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Way to the Tigers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Personal Memoirs For You
The Woman in Me Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Counting the Cost Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Night: New translation by Marion Wiesel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bad Mormon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making It So: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love, Pamela: A Memoir of Prose, Poetry, and Truth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Summer of Fall: Gravity is a bitch, but I'm still standing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angela's Ashes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wishful Drinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pageboy: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: Built for This: The Quiet Strength of Powerlifting Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Enough Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good Girls Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Stolen Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love, Lucy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5See You on the Way Down: Catch You on the Way Back Up! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Electric Woman
1 rating0 reviews