Elaine Ambrose

Bestselling Author, Ventriloquist, & Humorist

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Editorial Reviews are Positive for “Frozen Dinners” Memoir

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Frozen Dinners – A Memoir of a Fractured Family is available for pre-order. The hardcover book and eBook will be available in November. The publisher is Brown Books Publishing of Dallas, Texas.

Here is the publisher’s summary of the book.

After World War II, the United States evolved economically through an explosive combination of opportunities, entrepreneurs, and growing industries. By 1954, families began to enjoy the new pastime of evening television and increased the demand for a new product known as frozen TV dinners. A poor father and farmer from Wendell, Idaho had the audacity and vision to start his own trucking company to haul and deliver frozen food across the country and subsequently built an impressive fortune that included several successful businesses. Elaine Ambrose, a bestselling author, departs from her award-winning humor to show life as this man’s daughter. She chronicles the struggles her family experienced under the strain of an absent father and describes the high tensions and familial rivalries that arose after his untimely death. Using actual courtroom transcripts, she tells of the brutal courtroom drama that propelled her mother into dementia. She hopes to offer hope and inspiration to others who endured a contaminated family story to prove that anyone may grow beyond painful memories and find success, happiness, and warmth for themselves

Ambrose Trucking, 1952

The editorial reviews are positive. Here are two:

“Full of luscious details, clear-eyed compassion, and enduring joy, Ambrose’s memoir gives us an insider’s view of one family’s rocky pursuit of the American Dream. Even when she is relating personal stories of conflict, loss, and grief, Ambrose does so with a survivor’s voice made strong by experience, stubbornness, humor, and love.”

—Kim Barnes
Author of the Pulitzer Prize Finalist Memoir: In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country

“Elaine Ambrose and I share the need to write as a tangible expression of life’s milestones. This tell-all memoir, Frozen Dinners, will resonate with anyone who has endured family dysfunction and will defrost the hearts of readers everywhere.”

—Joely Fisher, actress,singer, and author of Growing Up Fisher

Ambrose Trucking, 1954

 

A premiere party and book signing event will be in Boise in November. Details to be announced.

Memoir Reviewed by Acclaimed Idaho Author

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My memoir Frozen Dinners is available on Amazon for pre-order. Brown Books Publishing has announced a release date for November 2018 to secure holiday promotion and purchases. Watch for the local premiere party, complete with TV dinners!

I appreciate this review from Kim Barnes, author of the Pulitzer Prize Finalist Memoir: In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country

“Full of luscious details, clear-eyed compassion, and enduring joy, Ambrose’s memoir gives us an insider’s view of one family’s rocky pursuit of the American Dream. Even when she is relating personal stories of conflict, loss, and grief, Ambrose does so with a survivor’s voice made strong by experience, stubbornness, humor, and love.”

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I worked on the manuscript for 20 years. My mother’s death in 2014, followed last year by the death of my younger brother George, convinced me to complete the book. The memoir tells the story of my father Neal Ambrose, born in Wendell, Idaho, as he climbed out of poverty and created an extensive fortune through trucking and farming enterprises. In the early 1950s, he established one of the first trucking companies in the country to haul frozen TV dinners, and during the 1960s, his farming operations introduced the first pivot sprinklers in southern Idaho. The pivots allow sprinkler pipes to rotate around a center pump to water crops.

However, the family lived in a state of emotional paralysis, and after my father’s death, everything was destroyed as the assets were squandered, the companies closed, and hundreds of employees lost their jobs. A chapter titled “Judgement Day” describes a brutal courtroom scene where a ruthless Boise attorney badgered my 77-year-old mother until she wet her pants. Another chapter devoted to her is titled “The Book of Leona.” The memoir concludes with my half-century journey to find warmth beyond the contaminated legacy of frozen dinners.

While ripping open the scars to write the book, I covered the wounds with healing humor and wrote Menopause Sucks, Midlife Cabernet, and Midlife Happy Hour.  I’m eager to return to writing humor.

Click this link for pre-ordering details about the hard cover edition: Frozen Dinners

 

 

Leave a Legacy of Laughter

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I made it to my 60s without irritating too many people, and now it’s time to consider what legacy, if any, will remain after I die.

Any leftover money should be spent on a lavish farewell wake and community party. My adult children won’t be inheriting stock portfolios or trunks full of gold. By not having those assets, I’ve saved my heirs from dealing with multiple accountants, estate lawyers, tax attorneys and nefarious scoundrels who will take every dime they inherit. My kids do, however, have a chance to own my treasured collection of wine corks from around the world and several baskets of finger puppets. I hope they won’t fight over them.

My kids already have the best gift I could share: a sense of humor. In a wicked world spewing toxic drama and trauma, they possess the ability to laugh in the face of chaos and spit in the eye of the storm. These are essential skills to have as they boldly jump out of the proverbial handbasket going to hell.

For more than 30 years, their comedic talents have caused me to laugh until I snort. This raw ability came in handy during their volatile teenage years when they tested my patience and failed the test. Just as I was ready to use my outside voice when my son missed his curfew, he would come home and share humorous stories of adventure and victimless pranks accomplished with his friends. I tried to stifle my amusement, but it was impossible to be mad at him. He always made me laugh.

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My daughter knew how to use silly dialects and animal noises to distract any pending consequences for breaking the rules. If she behaved beyond the normal shenanigans and anticipated my disapproval, she would race into the room, tilt back her head, grab her tongue, and baa like a wounded sheep. There was no use trying to maintain any semblance of parental authority. If I had practiced this clever technique with my father, I wouldn’t have been grounded for 40 years.

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My children grew up to become happy, productive adults with loving spouses and laughing children. Their two families include four adults, five children and two dogs, and they often take vacations together. During the last camping trip, they each posed in various yoga positions on a rock overlooking a picturesque river. Ranging in age from three to 46, their techniques included my daughter’s physically toned Lord of the Dance Pose and my son’s creative Danish Flying Old Viking Pose. I laughed out loud seeing the collage of photographs.

Laughter truly is the best medicine, and my children and their children should live healthy lives and giggle well into old age. I’m looking forward to the time when my grandchildren will avoid parental reprimands by telling tall tales and creating animated excuses.

If this next generation of children inherits the gifts of humor, they will be rich, indeed, and can happily continue the family legacy of laughter tax-free.

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