Born With a Rusty Spoon: an artist’s memoir
Bertie Stroup Marah
Had the bullet not missed her heart by on-sixteenth of an inch, this story would not have been told.
Born with a Rusty Spoon is the story of artist Bertie Stroup Marah who, along with her four siblings, spent her childhood in abject poverty moving from sawmill shacks, tents, dilapidated houses, trailers and even an abandoned railroad car in the isolated desert and mountainous hard scrabble ares of New Mexico. Bertie tells her story through the innocent eyes of her childhood while being raised by neglectful alcoholic parents.
The children make the best of their isolated world by creating imaginative adventures that Bertie tells with humor and heart. Bertie spends most of her life playing the role of family caregiver to her two younger sisters and peacemaker to her sometimes violent and frequently drunken parents.
At the tender age of eighteen Bertie marries and moves to Colorado. There, she is again thrown into the role of caregiver to her two baby boys and must make a living to help support her family, all the while continuing to repress her natural creative gift and desire to become an artist.
Bertie tells this true story of deprivation, hardship, domestic abuse; and later, acute clinical depression, a failed suicide attempt, a miraculous second chance, breast cancer, and ultimately redemption and success to become a nationally recognized, award-winning artist.
This is an inspiring story about family, love, and resiliency told with compassion, honesty, and pride.