Book Description

Not everybody has a father who took part in creating the most destructive weapon known to humankind and also developed the prototypical lens system for making wide-screen movies. Quite a few people have mothers who pared down their youthful aspirations as they turned their attention to raising a family. Most people have parents who lived a fair portion of their early lives unfettered by preoccupation with children’s needs, unaware of the limitations imposed by exigency, and full of the intoxicating sense that their whole lives lay ahead of them. We usually don’t really know these people who became our parents, and often don’t care to know them until it’s too late. So many of us are too focused on creating our own lives, trying to ensure that they are something other than our parents’ lives. So we fail to pay attention to who our parents were before they became the parents with whom we are familiar. By the time we wonder who they were their stories are often inaccessible to us. Pomegranate Jelly, A Cold War Family Preserved, is the story of these parents and their involvement with each other and with their world. The narrative reveals individual and family evolution in a historical context, explores motivating factors that led a pacifist couple into careers supporting defense technology for the military-industrial complex, and ponders human attributes of idealism, incongruence, denial, resignation and resilience. This is a story of true love--love for each other, for children, and for humanity.