Reading this memoir recalls Wordsworth’s insight, “The child is father of the man”. As the author describes his singular childhood as an only child raised by his enterprising and old-country Polish grandmother on a Michigan farm, we watch “Busia” churn butter, preserve pears, and save the imaginative lad from a series of mishaps. We see “Lenuś” get his finger stuck while operating her pedal sewing machine, dress as a witch for Halloween, and play librarian in their farmhouse. The child has a more ambivalent relationship with his own single mother, a siren who moves in and out of his early life, along with a cast of relatives who farm and work in auto factories. Busia, with her Polish customs, work, ethic, and broken English, is the young boy’s one constant – a gem of a woman who loves him with her whole heart and endows him with the ability to love and flourish in his own right. – Wanda Urbanska, author and broadcast journalist