Review by Melanie McGehee
In her latest book, Otherwise, I’m Fine, Barbara Presnell, long-time educator and writer, finally tells her own story. Her prior books celebrate the lives of what might be considered ordinary working people. In them, she honors millworkers, farmers, and blacksmiths, particularly those of the post World War generations that she’s familiar with in North Carolina and Virginia. In Otherwise, I’m Fine, Presnell continues highlighting what is quite ordinary—ordinary, as in common—as she unpacks grief and family estrangement.
When her father died in 1969, Barbara Presnell was fourteen years old. Her older sister was in high school, still at home. Her brother was away, in his freshmen year in college. After their father’s funeral, their mother gathered them together and told them that they would not talk about this. “It will be easier that way,” she said. Otherwise, I’m Fine begins its story sixteen years later. In the prologue, our narrator is confronted with her grief when her therapist asks, “Do you see you are living on a fault line?” Her recollection of that moment describes the story’s intimate conflict.
I knew she was right the minute she said it. She’d found me out, uncovered my secret. My father had died. I had missed him every single day for sixteen years. I was holed up in a broken house of old grief, deep sorrow, a daughter’s inability to let go, and the walls around me were beginning to crumble. (4)
Several years later, after her mother’s death, Barbara is given a collection of her father’s memorabilia, and after a poignant scene with his military uniform, Barbara determines to not only talk about him but go on a search. This memoir is the story of three adult siblings who journey across Europe to retrace their father’s path as a World War II soldier. The three reunite and heal, not only with words that break the once demanded silence, but also with this shared experience, a culmination of both remembering and creating new memories.
Presnell alternates between that present-day trip and flashbacks to childhood and early adulthood. This structure, easily recognized with chapter divisions, allows the reader to see how absence and silence shaped the family. As she gradually illuminates her own experience, Presnell also comes to understand more about the experiences of her mother and each of her siblings. Her ability to achieve emotional distance and offer compassion toward their perspectives is especially moving. There is then tenderness in the present-day narrative, as Presnell and her siblings care and accommodate one another during delays and changes in plans, headaches from dehydration, and a twisted ankle very early on in the trip.
In addition to this one family’s journey, this book is very much a travel guide for pilgrimage. Presnell explains their research and detailed planning efforts, even communicating with strangers abroad prior to leaving. She recounts specific encounters in various places and introduces us to named European war veterans and family members.
This is where I found Presnell’s theme of silence highlighted further. She notes how American soldiers, like her father, often returned home silent, burdened with stories too heavy or painful to share. In contrast, the Europeans who the siblings meet are eager to speak. Several have even curated personal one-room museums in their homes, preserving the memory of the war with care and reverence. In these passages, Otherwise, I’m Fine becomes quite obviously more than one daughter and one family’s journey.
There is a common, universal need to make sense of grief, to connect across time, and to find connection in our communal stories. Presnell’s writing succeeds in bringing the reader close. It is often understated in its simple honesty. Its tone is a balance of confessional and matter of fact. But it is layered. And it is quite often poetic.
If our last words about our father had been left for thirty years in the blue bedroom downstairs, our first words back remained in the attic, perhaps rising to the rafters, perhaps being dispersed out the vents by air, or sifting, like fine dust, onto the deep walnut boards we loosened and finally carried downstairs, too beautiful to leave behind. (pg. 183)
Barbara Presnell may be pleased to know that I am now going to go to my own attic and begin unpacking. Like her, I, too, have been held hostage by the all too ordinary practice of silencing my grief.
Otherwise, I’m Fine: A Memoir by Barbara Presnell
University of South Carolina Press, 2025, 264 pages, $26.99 [cloth],
9781643365060
Melanie McGehee lives in Columbia, SC. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University and she loves leading online writing workshops especially for women. Find her on substack at melaniemcghee.substack.com