A Life Made in Two Worlds

An erratic memoir reflecting author William Frame's search for an existence both true to its time and free enough of it to be guided in moral and ethical matters by a higher order. He meets many fascinating concepts along the way—Liberal Education vs. Professional Training, Political Community vs. individualized associations, and Vocational Duty vs. self-indulgence. He learns to live in two worlds as a farm kid in Appalachia raised by urban Philadelphian parents. That experience deepens when he disappoints his father in childhood and creates a self-portraying myth to overcome it—that his adult life amounts to a repair of a miserable childhood. Along with prompting frequent and successful searches for achievement in both academic and corporate careers, this myth precipitates a misremembrance and repression of his adolescence: wrongly portraying those years as "miserable" and the later years as "restorative." The writing out of the two-worlds idea via the book corrected the narrative and restored Frame's capacity for vocational living— helped by the teachings he draws from the decline and death of his dear wife, Anne, of his youngest child, Kate, and from the companionship of his Border Collie, Rose.