Linda Radtke
A crowd of friends, family members, and supporters gathered at the Zenbarn in Waterbury Center earlier this summer to celebrate the release of “A Mother’s Prayer,” a new memoir by Vermont author Steve Rand.
Published by Onion River Press, the book tells the story of Rand’s mother, Anne Rand, whose 13-year battle with cancer ended when she died, age 39, at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, on March 9, 1984, following a bone marrow transplant. Steve Rand was 15 years old at the time. She left behind three children whose lives had been shaped by years of illness, treatment, and their mother’s determination to hold the family together.
Rand credited writer Tom Powell and the program “Telling True Stories” with encouraging him to write about his mother. What began as a way of telling his own children about the grandmother they never knew evolved into a deeper effort to preserve her life.
The memoir moves between childhood memory and careful reconstruction of Anne’s earlier years. Rand recalls growing up in Waterbury, where WDEV radio, Father Logue, local neighborhoods, and community life formed the backdrop of daily experience. Books provided another refuge. As a boy, he made frequent trips to the public library, often bringing home the maximum number of books allowed and losing himself in stories.
The book also captures the rough-and-tumble world of boyhood — brothers wrestling, neighborhood play, toy guns, and the search for identity in the absence of a father. Even visits to the barbershop became meaningful rites of passage, offering glimpses into an adult male world that helped shape his understanding of growing up.
Rand writes candidly about the effects of chemotherapy on Anne, and the physical decline caused by years of cancer treatment. He remembers his mother’s exhaustion and the toll the disease took, including moments after treatment when she was severely weakened. Yet he also remembers her determination to continue caring for her children.
A devout Catholic, Anne worked tirelessly to support her family. She sold Tupperware, sold Avon, and held a low-wage secretarial job while navigating ongoing treatments and hospital stays. The children clipped coupons and learned to stretch limited resources. Through it all, she maintained the rhythms of motherhood, offering stability and care amid uncertainty.
The memoir also explores the strain on the family after Anne’s husband left New York to live with another woman in California. Rand reflects on the contrast between private hardship and public appearance, symbolized by a Sears family portrait that projected an image of happiness and unity even as the family struggled behind the scenes. His yearning for a father’s presence, his anger and loss at his neglect, always in the background.
To reconstruct parts of his mother’s early life, Rand relied on family interviews and oral histories. He credited the Vermont Folklife Center for its support and thanked relatives, including his aunts Joy and Dot, and his cousins, whose memories and photographs helped illuminate Anne’s younger years.
Rand created a Spotify playlist to accompany his memoir, drawing on music from artists such as Aretha Franklin to evoke the emotional landscape of his childhood and life with his mother.
At the heart of the memoir is Rand’s desire to honor what he describes as his mother’s selflessness and quiet courage. “Ordinary people can do extraordinary things,” he said, reflecting on the lesson her life left behind.
The book also supports a cause closely tied to its subject. Ten percent of proceeds will be donated to the American Cancer Society, and supporters will participate in Relay For Life as Team Anne in her honor.
More than a memoir, “A Mother’s Prayer” is a son’s attempt to preserve a life shaped by love, struggle, and faith — and to ensure that his mother’s story is not defined only by illness, but by the strength with which she lived it.
Rand is scheduled for a book signing at Bear Pond Books at 38 Main Street in Stowe on Aug. 1.
