Dragonfly Notes - by Anne Panning (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

When a seemingly routine medical procedure results in her mother's premature death, Anne Panning is left reeling. In her first full-length memoir, the celebrated essayist and short story writer draws on decades of memory and experience, piecing together hard truths about her own past and her mother's.

We follow Panning's winding path from rural Minnesota to the riverbanks of Vietnam's Mekong Delta. A stark, poignant tale of two women deeply connected, yet forever apart, Dragonfly Notes is a testament to the prevailing nature of love, whether in the form of a rediscovered note, a sudden moment of unexpected recall, or sometimes, simply, the sight a dragonfly flitting past.

Review Quotes

The emptiness left behind when a beloved parent dies is near impossible to describe, but Anne Panning, in Dragonfly Notes, manages to fill those hollow spaces with vivid characters, brilliant settings, keen honesty, and her accessible, inviting voice. This is a love-filled book that also acknowledges the complexity of life and parenting.

-- Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic & Desire

Dragonfly Notes took me home to the Midwest I grew up in, with its casseroles and lemon desserts, and my cousins waiting for us to gather after the funeral at their place, "a mile out of town," smack in the middle of cornfields and enormous farm machinery parked around the periphery like hulking dinosaurs. But you don't have to have been brought up on letter jackets and John Deere to be taken by the lyricism and power of this memoir. Dragonfly Notes is Panning's bruising and beautiful remembrance of her mother, who in high school took a wrong turn into an unhappy marriage. It is also the story of how we carry our childhoods through our lives and on into the raising of our own children. This is a book you will read, love, learn from, and share with others.

-- Ned Stuckey-French, author of The American Essay in the American Century