Pilibosian presents a highly detailed account of the lives of her Armenian immigrant parents and life in Watertown, Massachusetts, as a youngster. This includes an ethnography of the village in historic Armenia her parents came from after the Armenian Genocide, of which some facts are included, as well as descriptions of East Watertown and Watertown High School. In the 324 pages of the book, she itemizes each person and place mentioned in an extensive index, details books in a bibliography and presents rare photographs of people and locations.
She continues with her study of humanities in Harvard's continuing education, including the study of literature with Howard Mumford Jones and Paul Engle, presenting many anecdotes and particulars in a tract that becomes a tribute to the art and the craft of poetry and prose. Accounts of life in Cambridge as well as Watertown in the 1950s offers an unusual glimpse of the past. Her work includes editing The Armenian Mirror-Spectator for some years, giving her the writing practice and knowledge she needs.
Depression has bothered her, and health problems later intrude as she has a cardiac arrest during a routine surgery. Dwight E. Harken, M.D., an outstanding thoracic surgeon, saves her life with the best medical skill available in 1963. The book thus bears the marks of oral history, Harvard history, and medical history.She also offers learned comments on psychology and mental health.
Travel to Europe and the Middle East with her husband adds to the action, as do hundreds of names of people and sites she encounters in all phases of her experience. She learns a great deal about many populations and relates them in chapters about pre-Civil War Lebanon, France and Germany as well as of other travel stops.
Later she reads the theories of Carl Gustave Jung, who turned Freud's theories positive with the addition of a few of his own, and becomes a follower. In a complicated way, the memory of her surgery and these theories lead her to a mystical experience, which in turn fires her literary inspiration. She follows her inclination and writes and publishes a number of books of poetry and prose through her Ohan Press, which she describes at length. It is located at http://home.comcast.net/~hsarkiss.