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Faded Genes: Memories of a Motherless Daughter

Donna Jean Pomeroy
St. Jacques Publications (2007)
ISBN 9780970317735
Review by Lisa Heidle for RebeccasReads (2/08)

In 1960, Rose Jacques died during childbirth, leaving behind a distraught husband and eleven grieving and frightened children. Donna Jean (Jacques) Pomeroy, the seventh child, chronicles the family’s turbulent history in “Faded Genes: Memories of a Motherless Daughter.”

“Every day of that first year after my mother’s death was January ninth for me,” Donna Jean shares. She is caught in the middle of her many siblings, she struggles with the trauma of losing a mother and the destitution of her family while witnessing her over-burdened father valiantly trying to keep his children together.

In a story-telling fashion comparable to a family reunion reminiscence we are taken back to a more traditional time when women stayed in the home, caring for the children and men ventured out into the world and earned a steady paycheck. With the death of Rose, the Jacques family is forced to challenge many of the ideals and survive purely through strength of will, ingenuity and the love they feel for one another.  

“Faded Genes” reminds us that much of parenting is leading by example. Without a mother and with an ill-equipped father, the children of the Jacques family had to experience many of the simple, everyday life challenges through trial and error. In the absence of any supervision, the six girls set fire to the yard, permed the youngest girls’ hair, and attempted to throw a birthday party for their sister Sarah without any food in the home. As the girls grow older, their fear of dying during childbirth is shared and they declare that only through adoption will they become mothers, Donna Jean the most adamant.

Interspersed with the telling of childhood pranks and adventures, painful and tragic happenings emerge. When Donna Jean is sent to the door to tell the gas man her father isn’t home in order to avoid payment, her father stays in the other room, hiding in bed, under blankets. John Jacques shame and his daughter’s frustration are easily imagined.

More startling is the manner in which the author breezes over the molestation and torment she and her sisters experienced at the hand of a family friend. When the youngest sisters tell their father, “Ernie plays dirty,” his only reply is, “If he doesn’t want to play fair, don’t play the game.” The same blasé telling is used when Donna Jean recounts the date rape she endured. She chooses to lean on the overuse of exclamation points to express her outrage and pain instead of reaching a little deeper and locating the emotion through words.

The memoir, “Faded Genes,” reminds us our past is only a small part of whom we are and that those who came before us were also, many times, victims of circumstances. If what Ms. Pomeroy wanted was to give testimony to her parents and family, she has succeeded. When the author acknowledges to her father that it must have been hard for him after the loss of his wife, his simple answer resounds with truth when he replies, “I just did what I had to do.”   


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