Joanne Azen Bloom

Safe at Home Joanne Azen Bloom

Joanne Bloom, née Azen, from a long-established Jewish family in Pittsburgh, was raised to be A Very Nice Girl in accordance with the pre-feminist norms of the 1940s. She is nineteen when she marries the handsome boy-next-door-who proves to be a serial philanderer. After twenty-three years of not-exactly wedded bliss, they have three grown children and a mountain of debt. Along the way, Joanne has earned bachelor's and master's degrees in education and has taught first grade for ten years to help support the family. (Her husband, Jack, wagers and loses her entire first years' salary in one weekend, by the way.) She finally divorces him, symbolically burns her bra (big mistake-it melts in the fireplace), and falls in love with a man eighteen years her junior (huge secret). Tommy Tanzer is also on the way to becoming a teacher, but aspires to be a major-league baseball agent. The two move to Park City, Utah, for a fresh start, teach school for six years, and then decide to hit the road, traveling the country in a used camper-van, trying to sign up-and-coming players. Big pipe dream? Of course. Ridiculous odds of success on multiple fronts? Sure. But they're crazy for each other. And although Joanne believes in Tommy, she refuses to remarry: there's that age differential, and she has huge trust issues, understandably-not to mention a mother's fierce devotion to her suicidal, mentally-ill daughter. Eventually someone will wise up and make the movie about their lives. Until then, here is an unflinchingly honest memoir, by turns poignant, wrenching, and witty. Safe at Home offers a mosaic of vivid moments encompassing a lifetime that, viewed as a whole, present a woman's journey of self-discovery and her moving testament to abiding and enduring love.