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by Deborah Antoine (Author)
TWO FORKS, TWO SPOONS is a historical family memoir by Deborah Cross Antoine, documenting the extraordinary lives, loves, lineage, and legacy of the author's parents, Irving and Alzada Cross - also known as Mr. & Mrs. Wonderful.
The title alludes to Alzada's description of the newlyweds' meager belongings in 1950. Their simple serving set was made up of mismatched amusement park prizes, but they had everything they needed - two plates, two knives, two forks, two spoons, and one another.
In telling the legendary love story of her parents, Deborah begins with her unusual but idyllic childhood as one of six "Crazy Cross" children growing up during the 1950s and '60s in a little house on Little Neck Island in Swansea, Massachusetts. It's a stark contrast to the telling of her wonderful parents' very different childhoods, starting with her mother Alzada's earliest memory - the Great Fall River Fire of 1928.
Irving and Alzada rarely talked about their own parents and childhoods, and for the Cross kids, it was always about living in the present. But, even as a member of the crazy-happy, story-loving Cross family, Deborah didn't realize how little she knew of her parents' pasts until Mr. Wonderful passed away on Father's Day in 2008, just hours after meeting his first-born great-grandchildren - twin girls, Deborah's first grandchildren.
The loss of her father launched Deborah on an investigative voyage into her family history - a journey which continues to this day. She dug up old photos, census records, and newspaper articles, and the deeper she went, the more long-forgotten stories and secrets she unearthed, from the heartbreakingly average to the wildly scandalous - and with a quite literal "touch" of the supernatural.
Deborah's mother Alzada passed away at the age of 96 in November of 2022, surrounded by her beloved children in her little house on Little Neck Island, but the love story of Mr. & Mrs. Wonderful lives on through their crazy-wonderful descendants, and in the pages of TWO FORKS, TWO SPOONS.
