An accident? Or murder? A modern-day woman journeys to her
Wyoming roots to find out the truth!
SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- The book Burning of the Marriage Hat (ISBN 0971447322)
by Margaret Benshoof-Holler (copyright 2002) is based, in part, on the author's own coming of age in a small town in Wyoming
during the McCarthy and post-McCarthy era of the 1960s. The book describes the conditions of women
in the 1960s and one woman's journey back to face past ghosts.
This is family saga goes deep to the root of the Wyoming land, the people and family,
and the narrator's own sense of unresolved issues. It also draws a vivid picture of the effects of divorce and
domestic abuse on the children within a family.
"This is a spell-binding and most poignant tale of a woman's search for the daughter she lost to adoption and the
secrets she uncovers along the way. A very true to life portrayal of a large segment of women who relinquished
children to adoption." --Joe Soll, CSW, author of Adoption Healing...A
Path to Recovery, co-author of Adoption Healing... a path to recovery for mothers who lost children to adoption
"A generational tale deftly written with penetrating insight, personality, and feeling,
Burning of the Marriage Hat is very highly recommended reading and
would make an exceptional selection choice for women's reading groups."
--The Midwest Book Review
"Strong character roles, strong women. An intriguing novel!" --Lorie & Julia,
the Lorie & Julia Show, FM 107 WFMP Radio, St. Paul, MN
A: Literally, it means something like the marriage veil. In another way, it is something more symbolic.
In life we find ourselves wearing different hats for different occasions. American women wore many
different hats during the 20th century -- the "housewife hat", the "wife and mother hat," the "working woman" hat,
"the liberated woman hat," "the marriage hat" and so on. The marriage hat has a more significant
meaning when applied to a certain group such as the unwed pregnant women.
Q: What does the title Burning of the Marriage Hat mean?
A: Though some might see it as an act of rebellion against the sanctity of
matrimony, which is not what was meant by the title, literally, it's the hat that the narrator's grandmother is forced by her
husband to burn after all love and romance has died in their marriage.
Q: Is Burning of the Marriage Hat: A Novel of High Plains Women just a book about
high plains women?
A: This is a story about a modern-day woman, a world-traveled woman who returns to her
roots to resolve conflicting family accounts about her grandmother's death. This is also a book about the lives of girls and women across the 20th century
in Wyoming and these are seen through the narrator's flashbacks through time. The book also focuses on the conditions of unwed pregnant women and
girls in the 60s. The setting is Wyoming because that's were the author came of age and where her roots are. The conditions of unwed pregnant women
during the 1960s were not unique to Wyoming. They affected women throughout the U.S. Since leaving Wyoming over 30 years
ago, the author has lived throughout the world and now lives in San Francisco. She has a broad perspective honed not just from one geographical
area but from many different places. The author's Wyoming roots, though, are what give the story flavor and a different perspective.
Similar to an Australian family saga or Irish or Italian, this one is set in Wyoming.
Interviews
Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler has been featured on:
KALW 97.1 FM, San Francisco, CA, author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Paul Linde on "Health, Mind
and Body." See: KALW Interview
Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler Interviewed by KGO AM 810's Ed Baxter on the Morning News in San Francisco
Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Emily Elfenbein, WBEB 101-FM, Philadelphia, PA "The Women's File."
Women's File Interview
Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Don Riggs, KMPS-94.1 FM morning news, Seattle, WA.
Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Susan Franzblau
for "Women's Voices Women's Lives" on NPR affiliate WFSS, 91.9 FM
Fayetville, North Carolina with a focus on Burning of the Marriage Hat and conditions of unwed
pregnant women. See: INTERVIEW
KZYX 91.5 FM Mendocino, CA, author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Janie Rezner on "Women's
Voices"
TV
Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler Interviewed by Barrie Louise-Switzen, Executive Producer for the Woman's Connection (sm) aired on the Manhattan
Neighborhood Network in Manhattan on cable channel 34 and RCN channel 109. "Giving up a child in the '60's and
how it shaped her life." .
"The denial of the existence of the problem of a pregnant teen, a theme in this book, is also a theme in life."
--Susan Franzblau, PhD, host of "Women's Voices,
Women's Lives" on NPR affiliate WFSS 91.9 FM.
Question: Denial of the existence of a pregnant teen is a focus
of your book set in the 1960s. Do you think it's an issue today?
Author: In the year 2002 in the U.S., we have teen pregnancy and
single welfare mothers along with six million "birthmothers", many of whom gave their children up for adoption
in the 60s and early 70s. This is a large group of women with strong voices and we almost never
hear them. They are a group of women who have been kept out of sight. And for what reason? This must say
something about whether the stigmas of the 60s are still with us. This group of women has some of
the strongest voices among any women in the U.S. today. But their voices have been stifled. And they've
been misrepresented.
Also, marriage was one of two ultimatums (not choices but ultimatums) for the 60s unwed
mothers. And some today would like to make it an ultimatum again for single welfare
mothers. The attitudes linger and history repeats itself.
Q: Is the experience of giving up a child for adoption the same for women who have
relinquished children through open adoptions as those who relinquished through closed ones?
A: The emotional experience can be the same,
I believe, if a woman has relinquished a child before she is ready--when she wasn't given enough time to make
the decision. At the same time, women who have relinquished through open adoptions may have little or no
understanding of the closed adoption experience. I believe it is important to know history. I also think it crucial
for lawmakers to know something about how other nations deal with adoption in order to weigh options and
improve the process.
Q: Can you please share with me how you
were selected to write a chapter in Vietnam: A Reader?
I researched and wrote the article "Post-
Traumatic Stress Disorder" (PTSD) to try to understand my stepfather, a World War II veteran. In the writing and
research of that article, I came to understand PTSD very well and was able to see its effects among many different
populations of people who hadn't even been in a war zone. PTSD is associated with loss. And war causes a great loss
of lives. Loss, in general, is not dealt with well in the U.S. culture. And ungrieved loss
takes its toll on many different segments of the population. Anything incomplete in one generation gets passed on to
the next. With each new war, it continues to have the same effects. The cost of war is great for all involved.
In writing the article on PTSD, I was able to see its effects on the birthmother population--women who have lost
children to the adoption system
(Invisible Veil). A very large number of women gave children up for adoption about the same time
that we were losing many young men in Vietman during the 60s and early 70s. In the case of the Vietnam veteran and the
birthmother--a trauma occurred because something was lost. Vietnam vets lost buddies to death. Birthmothers
lost babies to adoption. In both cases, the whole thing was not really dealt with.
Burning of the Marriage Hat, a fiction book, is based on my experience of coming of age and
giving a child up for adoption in Wyoming during the 1960s. That was during an era when there was a big stigma
associated with being unwed and pregnant. Thus, things had to be hidden. The whole thing
was hushed up then. And the adoption experience, in many ways, is still kept hidden today.
Adoption records are still closed in many U.S. states. Still a need in 21st century to keep things hidden.
See the Invisible
Veil.
Q: Did you write this book to come to terms with your
own ghosts and the past?
A: No. I never thought about it being something like
that--a therapy process. This was a creative process. I wrote the book because the story was there to write. I started
out by trying to be very
objective about the narrator (my journalism training). I hadn't decided who she would be in the beginning. But as I
delved in to try to develop the character, she ended up looking like me in some ways. Her experience came from what I
had experienced. I didn't plan it that way or think it through or sit down and write an outline. I didn't go out looking for
ghosts. The ghosts came to me. Then the story evolved into the book that you have now. It was a very circular
process and many things happened during the writing to shape it.
A: Ask for the book at your favorite bookstore. Or buy the book by
clicking on the this secure cart and ordering the book here. You can also buy online at any of
the links listed at the bottom of this page. You can also by the book from the
publisher.
Fiction / Women's Issues / Adoption /
Grief & Recovery/ Family History / Domestic Violence / Divorce / the West /
Trade paperback, 8 1/2 X 5 1/2, 381 pages
ISBN: 0-9714473-2-2
LCC#: 2001095609
$14.95
I began writing Burning of the Marriage Hat on a journey back to Wyoming to dig into family roots
and to uncover some past mysteries. On one trip back, I also wrote a journalism piece about Matthew Shepherd,
the gay University of Wyoming student who was beaten and tied to a fence post and left to die
in sub-zero temperatures in 1998 near Laramie, Wyoming (entitled
"Love and Hate in the Equality State" and published in the Hearst-owned San
Francisco Examiner). Not being gay myself, but a woman
who grew up in Wyoming during an era when conditions for women were not the best in
any location in the U.S. (this was before the 1964 Civil Rights Act had a chance to settle in
to prevent discrimination against anyone on the basis of sex, race or religion and before the
1972 passage of Roe v. Wade), I had a feel for the Matthew Shepherd story. And wrote it.
But, in the process of writing that piece, I was developing the narrator Katherine in my book. She had already
been shaped, but I knew I could bring her out more. Writing the Matthew Shepherd story as a journalism piece
made me realize that there was a part of the character in my book that could be hidden if I wrote my book from a
journalistic frame of mind. Writing the book as fiction helped free me up as a writer and provide a truer picture of
the main character which was drawn from my own experience.
In the process of fleshing out the narrator Katherine, I began fleshing out myself as a mother and
coming to terms with many things that I hadn't faced exactly. This is the story of the narrator Katherine. It is also
the story of the large number of women who gave their children up for adoption in the U.S. in the 1960s."
The denial of a murder in a family and the denial of the problem of a pregnant teen link four generations of Wyoming
women. The symbol of the Burning of the Marriage Hat relates to the cleaning up of unresolved issues
and denial within a family.
Burning of the Marriage Hat is a story about a middle-class family in a small town in Wyoming and
the coming of age of a young woman during the post-McCarthy era of the 1960s. It's the story of a woman
who returns to her roots to release the ghosts of her past. Set in Wyoming, known as the "Equality State"
because that's where women first gained the right to vote and sit on juries in the U.S. and also where I came of age
in the 1960s sexual revolution, the book is also about a place.
