Susie Berta has written her memoir, "The Veterinarian's Wife," published by a small, southern imprint, Boll Weevil Press, and is available now on Amazon. In this often funny, sometimes revealing memoir, she writes about her life over the past decades, her music, her art, and of course, her husband, Rick, the veterinarian. She tells her story movingly and wittingly as she muses on southern life, marriage, therapy, horses, dogs, cows, pigs, and cats.
She is also a freelance writer, and a regular weekly columnist for The Newnan Times-Herald, her local newspaper in Newnan, GA, a lovely town 45 miles south of Atlanta. She has also had her writing published in The Newnan Coweta Magazine, HerStry online magazine, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She has lived in Newnan with her husband, Rick, a veterinarian, since 1977. They raised two boys, Scott and Nick, and have two grandchildren. As an empty nester, she returned to school in 2003 and earned a BFA in Art. Retired from a long career as a professional vocalist/performer, Susie writes full-time about a variety of topics, including motherhood, marriage, life, music, art, writing, cooking, gardening, entertaining, and decorating. She will never retire from writing.
She has two blogs she rarely has time to update these days, one on gardening www.onehappygardener.wordpress.com and the other a literary “word-nerd” blog at www.susieberta.blogspot.com emphasizing some of her favorite and also the most perplexing words she encounters while reading.
She is a member of The Author’s Guild, Atlanta Writing Club, 3-Hearts Writing Group, a small and discerning book club, “Carpe Diem!, HerStry Critique Group “Babes Who Write”, Association of Writers and Writing Programs.
About the Book:
“Why was there a calf in our bathtub, and a pig in my car? Who was the leggy blonde who became the love of my life when we rescued him from a pseudo psychiatrist, an abusive, real-life Cruella Deville? What happens when a wife and mother spins all the domestic plates: marriage, children, career, depression, therapy, a return to school late in life, aging, grandchildren, and retirement while her husband focuses on a career requiring life and death decisions every day?
As the wife of a veterinarian, I have so much to tell from my perspective. I’ve written a memoir full of personal essays, snapshots in time. My stories are an inside peek into the veterinarian’s world and that of his wife. Who doesn’t love stories with animals? Along with the animals are reflections of our personal lives. All these stories engender laughter, tears, joy, despair, insight, anger, and wonderment. We have experienced fully human, impactful lives, full of triumphs and losses, professional and personal, his, mine, *and* ours.
How did we manage together? We couldn’t be more different: he is a rugged outdoorsman and workaholic; I am a city girl with refined tastes and was a diva with a singing career. He cares nothing about clothes. I have a walk-in closet full. He is quiet. I performed for a living. I toured Europe with the Atlanta Symphony, while he took our boys mud-boggin’ at the county raceway. He has no sense of aesthetics. I have a degree in art. If it weren’t for me, he says, we’d be living in a block hut with dirt floors. I say over my dead body. How did we make it through fifty years together? How did we support each other? What happened when we lost our way for a while? How did we save our marriage? Why are we happy? What did each of us sacrifice and compromise in favor of our careers, marriage, and children?
And really, why *was* there a calf in our bathtub, and a pig in my car?