Tanya Ward Goodman’s father painted carnival signs for a living and raised his family in Tinkertown Museum, a roadside attraction in rural New Mexico whose walls were made of beer bottles.  When he was diagnosed in his 50s with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, Goodman gave up her writing career and a new love in Los Angeles to move back home, only to become more and more unmoored as her father’s memory grew hazy.  Being her father’s daughter was what she did best; when he inevitably forgot her name, who would she be?  Her memoir, LEAVING TINKERTOWN (forthcoming from the University of New Mexico Press), is an account both humorous and heart-wrenching of the ways that loss reshaped her eccentric family and propelled her to realize that her place in the world lay outside “the museum.” We’ve received some marvelous blurbs for it, including these from novelists Michelle Huneven and David Ebershoff:

“Tanya Ward Goodman, writing with a big heart, clear eyes, and a light touch, allows us a privileged glimpse into the shabby, enchanted world of traveling carnivals, roadside attractions, and a beloved, eccentric father’s descent into Alzheimers. Just as her dad animated the handcarved, miniature western world of Tinkertown from coat hangers, inner tubes and old sewing machine motors, Tanya Ward Goodman has fashioned her complex and often hilarious memories into a beguiling, wry, and moving work of art.” —Michelle Huneven, author of Blame

“A moving story about a father and daughter, both artists who created something special out of imagination and love.  Ross Ward left us his magical world of Tinkertown.  And Tanya Ward Goodman has given us this beautiful book.” — David Ebershoff, author of The 19th Wife