Hanging Off the Edge ---

The next morning in Alpena, Michigan, lying exhausted in bed in yet another strange (but oh so familiar) motel room, I think about my life-our lives, Bart's and mine. Touring from town to town-no health insurance, no steady jobs, no children, no insurance of any kind against the dark forces in the world. Hanging Off the Edge is an extraordinary journey into the mind and life of one of America's most creative women, Priscilla McLean. McLean shares her precarious cliff-edge existence as a classical avant-garde troubadour and the day-by-day tour of the world through Europe, Asia, and Australia. She also writes of her touching story, from growing up in a middle-class family fallen on hard times during World War II to her seemingly settled life as a college professor's wife. McLean's quotes from her extensive journals, kept over a twenty-five-year span of time, give an immediacy and poignancy to Hanging Off the Edge. Mingled with these memories are original short poems, philosophical thoughts on the artist's life, and a whole section where McLean explores how, over the span of thirty-five years, thirteen special musical creations were born and placed before the world.