Twists and Turns There Once Was a Dream

<p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Claire LeBrint Metzger is a real person and also the fictional narrator of Twists and Turns an</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>imagined memoir based on Claire's life. Fictional Claire writes her memoir in 1994 at the age of</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>80. The historical backdrop for her life story includes major twentieth century events: The</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Depression World War II the Holocaust and the growth of Communism. Claire was born in</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Chicago in 1914 to Jewish immigrant parents who wanted their daughters to marry Nice Jewish</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Men settle down and have children. Claire wanted different. She wanted romance but not</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>necessarily marriage. She wrote poetry and short stories and dreamed of being a journalist. In the</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>1930s she carried on a long-distance flirtation with a Spanish pen-pal who reported on his life</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>including his experiences fighting on both sides in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) with the</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Red Army Brigade and with Franco's Fascist army. From 1940 to 1943 Claire got involved in</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>a real-life romance with a non-Jewish political cartoonist who worked for a major Chicago</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>newspaper. When her parents found out about him. They banished her to California. One year</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>later they demanded she return to Chicago. Claire moved back home took office jobs doing</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>drudge work became more and more depressed had a mental breakdown and for a brief time</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>was hospitalized. Slowly she turned her life around with the help of a wise psychiatrist and</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>loving friends. In 1967 at age 53 Claire got married for the first time to a Nice Jewish Man who</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>was quirky enough to understand and support her in her pursuit of her dreams.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>This imagined memoir is full of twists and turns highs and lows pathos and humor as told by an</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>unusual creative and most interesting woman whom readers will be glad they got to know.</span></p>