About the Book: Torch in the Dark tells the moving story of how Hadiyah Joan Carlyle, a single mother haunted by memories of her own traumatic childhood, pioneered as one of the first women since World War II to enter the trades as a union welder. Beginning in a Jewish immigrant neighborhood in New Jersey, the story moves through San Francisco’s colorful Haight-Ashbury in the sixties to arrive at Fairhaven Shipyard in Bellingham, Washington. For Hadiyah, welding becomes a metaphor for healing from the dark past as well as a path to self-reliance and economic survival. While providing insightful perspective on the culture of the 1960’s and 1970’s, Torch in the Dark offers profound inspiration for anyone struggling with issues of abuse and oppression. Overall Thoughts: I had a bit of a hard time getting into this memoir as the writing is more blunt and pointed into the facts at the beginning. As you get past the first few chapters, you start to understand and see thr...
Opening a Chapter of Inspiration Served with a Heavy Dose of Reality