Held in Five Hands

Held in Five Hands gathers the memoirists here who have held in their hands work of the land, and within that work holds their pain, hands that carry scars, hands that held babies who blossomed into their own, hands that built a life anew.
      More Like a Ranch Hand Than a Son is a heartbreaking memoir of a boy driven deeper into a life of crime by his tumultuous upbringing. Sentenced to three decades in prison, this is not a prison memoir but a portrait of the troubled life that led Harry Olivarez there. Told candidly against the backdrop of Fresno, it reveals how a son, shaped by hardship, finds the strength to confront his past and break a cycle.
   Faded Scars opens us to a situation that is not unique and reclaims the silencing hidden in the very nature of that statement. Laura A. Lindstrom writes a memoir that confronts family trauma and a childhood marked by wounds too often left unnamed. She shows us how violence against women persists in every form, how it multiplies—spreading through generations, echoing in relationships, and seeping into lives we believe to be untouched. In doing so, she lends compassion to a universal experience of trauma, reminding us that while it may not be unique, the courage to embrace it, to open it, and to call it toward healing—always is. This memoir insists that the scars we carry may never truly fade, but the ways we choose to confront them, and the communities we allow to hold us, can shape the path forward.
     The Return is Rebecca Marine's story of coming back home to a place that looks unchanged, yet feels entirely different. It is the home transformed by her own transformation, where the child becomes the caregiver. With honesty and grace, Rebecca Marine carries you into the opening of herself and the unfolding of her spiritual journey.
     Scattered Hearts, about a daughter who is orphaned for a period of time, but her dad is still alive. Told through Magdalena Marquez's eyes, it is a coming of age story shaped by the desire for nothing more than to be reunited with her family in the shadow of their shared grief.
    Dear Mothers, is a celebration of the village that helps to raise the seeds. It’s a party, a conversation, a call, a neighborhood, a letter, an open invitation to see life through a joyful mother’s eyes. It’s the journey of a brave mother in her purest and rawest form, that so happens to be intertwined with other mothers whose friendship and care form an unbreakable bond, despite their differences in heritage and hardship. Dear Mothers dares you to step into the shoes of motherhood, run in them, and then kick them off because the journey is not a sprint, but a stride and one that was left up to Chetera Watson to carry with her husband, beaming with pride.