Jane Birks signs copies of her fourth memoir "Growing Up"

Jane Wyman Donnelly Birks is the author of Walking a Good Pigeon Toe, an account of her life growing up with two sisters in a Kenwood household where her divorced mother was supporting the family and later in the 1940s as a first-year student at the University of Minnesota, where she befriended navy cadet George Herbert Walker Bush, future president of the United States.

In her second memoir Still Kicking, she continued the story with a surprisingly candid view of her life in St Paul. Amid the tissue-paper facade of 1950s social norms, she finds moments of affection, humor and stimulating conversation, even in a household disintegrating in the face of disability and addiction. Jane Birks’ third book Waking Up Alive tells of community living at the Wellington Senior Living Facility.

Now Jane Birks returns with her fourth book Growing Up. She returns to her youth, telling the story of her father and his struggles with alcoholism.

----

Jane Wyman Donnelly Birks is a long time St Paul resident and author. She is a pistol.