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Otherwise, I’m Fine
by Barbara Presnell

Praise for the book 

"Otherwise, I'm Fine is a story about connection—how we connect, disconnect, reconnect. Presnell is a gifted and gutsy writer. Her memoir is utterly compelling, full of longing and grace."

—Judy Goldman, author of
Child: A Memoir

A daughter's story of unresolved grief and a family's hard-won healing

When her husband Bill died in 1969, Tina Presnell gathered her three children. "We won't talk about this," she said. "It will be easier that way." In 2012, several years after her mother's death, Barbara Presnell recovered her father's World War II belongings: a scrapbook, news clippings, documents, and letters. Recalling how much his war experiences had meant to him, Barbara, along with her estranged brother and sister, planned a journey to travel their father's route through Europe. From Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, to the western bank of the Elbe River in Magdeburg, Germany, the siblings would follow the movements of their father's division and rediscover his stories, share memories, and renew family bonds.


In Otherwise, I'm Fine, Presnell tells the story of her grief and, across her tour of western Europe, the breakthroughs that released her from recurring depression, resolved her conflicted grief for her mother, and returned her beloved father to her and her siblings as a living memory.

Finding Fox Red, excerpt

I picture our father, his pack heavy, ammunition belt strapped around his waist, his rifle high in the air, trudging through the ice-cold water of the English Channel then, as the water becomes more shallow, racing to the shoreline. I marvel at the steep rise of the rocks, imagine young soldiers scrambling. Bill follows a narrow path that leads up the steep incline, climbing on his hands and knees to the top. “Once they got up here,” he calls down, “there’s nothing but hedgerows.”

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     Edwin and I stand side by side staring into the water in front of us, and we turn to face the cliff. Edwin slides his arm around me and squeezes my shoulder, I turn for a full hug, perhaps the first time I have put my arms around him since our mother died fourteen years earlier when it was more obligatory than genuine. Now, my embrace is full of spontaneity and joy. His large arms don’t hug lightly. He pulls me into his chest, and I rest my head against his shoulder, brushing away tears. Bill stands back, giving us this moment.

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     Edwin reaches for a chunk of driftwood and begins to write across the shoreline. I slip off my shoes despite the cold and dig my bare toes into sand. Using the heel of my shoe as a writing instrument, I join Edwin in scripting a message. In letters tall and wide enough to be seen by a plane passing overhead, we spell out, “WGP,” our father’s initials, and “June 12, 1944,” the day he ran up the beach where we now stand.

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     When we’ve photographed every rock and shrub of this place, we retrace our hike to the parking lot, and there, on a picnic table, is Ellen, her knee swollen to twice its normal size. She’s watching down the beach for a sign of us, and, seeing us, she waves. David sits beside her, his hand lightly resting on hers.

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     By now, the midday sun has centered itself in the sky, and wind whips around my collar and blows my hair. I stand beside Edwin, looking out over the channel. We’ve done this thing, I think, together from the start. Something has shifted between the two of us. Maybe I could like him, I think. Maybe I could love him.

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