rescue the good stuff

by Louisa Loveridge Gallas

PLEASE NOTE:This book is unavailable for sale online. Please contact the author directly if you are interested in purchasing a copy.

Rescue the Good Stuff brings us young Madeleine Kidd, the smart, spunky only child of a con-man father and a mother longing for a better life. Maddie’s journey is a compelling mix of enchantment and betrayal, secrets and discovery. Often alone, she chooses imagination, the power of words, and her unique pal, Shiny, for her closest companions. In this luminous sequence of story-like poems, the language is fresh, double-edged, available, yet evocative, true to a young narrator’s voice. As Maddie testifies, “Words are the coolest!”

 “Young Maddie Kidd lives in a world where teachers humiliate students, where the repo man is a familiar sight, where flawed yet loving parents damage their children despite good intentions, and where children learn what they need to survive. The line between lies and stories shifts and blurs, as do the lines between poetry and prose, delusion and reality, unfolding Maddie’s simultaneously shiny and shabby life.”               

           --Wendy Vardaman (Co-editor, Verse Wisconsin)

 “Maddie Kidd captures your heart with her secrets and young poet soul. This novel-like sequence of epiphanies in a girl’s voice is unique; there is nothing like it in American poetry.”

            -- Antler (Winner, Walt Whitman Award/Walt Whitman Assn.)

 “Louisa Loveridge Gallas takes us into the muddied existential waters of childhood, narrated by the precociously wry Madeleine Kidd. Her father is a figment of his own imagination; Maddie and her mother are flotsam and jetsam tossed in his fantasies. With no reliable witness, Maddie negotiates her reality, innocent yet wary, a journey both everyday and underground. Though separated from her by my race and gender, as a Black person I identify with Maddie’s double consciousness: how to become oneself while being the object of others’ power, unconsciousness, and distorted expectations.”

            -- Dr. Kenneth Addison (Professor Emeritus, Northeastern Illinois University)

 “Louisa Loveridge Gallas has written a tour de force that grabs you and will not let go. In a lively, inviting voice, Maddie Kidd reveals the multi-layered consciousness of a child seeking truth, suppressing troubles, and having fun, all at the same time. Her blind confidante, Shiny, brings a nuanced yet universal touch as to Maddie’s unruly world.”

               -- Shirley M. C. Johnson, PhD (Fulbright Profesor of English)

About Louisa Loveridge Gallas

Louisa Loveridge Gallas is an award winning poet, long-time performer, and counselor. She has been an artist in residence with the Wisconsin Arts Board and her poems have appeared in many journals and publications.  Her weave of story-telling anecdotes and poetry can be seen in various YouTube segments of live performance.

Her most recent book, The Wizard’s Dream: A Universal Winter’s Tale, was recognized as a 2011 Finalist for an Eric Hoffer Book Award.  Elfrieda Abbe, former Publisher and editor of The Writer writes “Louisa Loveridge Gallas brings us a delightful young wizard . . .who is as confused by the human condition as we are. . . .”

Louisa is the author of a collection of poems:  Revelations on Longing Street (Earth Solutions Press) and a chapbook of nature poems, Low Life and Blood Relatives (Singing Road Press) connected to her performances with Milwaukee’s Earth Poets and Musicians. 

As a ‘para-professional’ musician, she has performed with Recording Artist/Singer/songwriter Claudia Schmidt who recorded and also performs Louisa’s poetry in live concerts and appearances including Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion.”  Schmidt writes of Revelations on Longing Street:  “. . .I am reminded to forego cynicism and simply celebrate this wild ride called the human condition.”

As a counselor, Louisa specializes in wholistic approaches to trauma and conflict resolution, combining insight into one’s history with how the body and the unconscious carry that history.

Louisa lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her husband, Richard Gallas, to whom she owes much gratitude for welcoming the muse into their life.