Angels of a Lower Flight, is a memoir of Susie Scott Kracacher's life. The main theme of the book is "One woman's mission to save a country, one child at a time." The book is written in flashback format but not all in chronological order. She started off talking about one of the fist time she visited Haiti. She goes in to very graphic detail of what she saw and what compelled her to make a difference in this country. She also talks about her childhood and her mother. She switches off with stories of her life and childhood and stories of Haiti. She jumps around but the story is very easy to follow.
The fist time Susie ever visited Haiti she was on a missionary trip for her church. Susie explains that she dislikes the word missionary. She says that it is inaccurate. "I had come to Haiti without a Christian agenda or connection to an organization, only the desire to make good on a promise I made to God when I was little." Pg. 5 She had come to Haiti to help in the hospitals and to help the children. She talks about one hospital she visited in particular. She explained it great detail the smells and the emotions she felt. She used such great description of the sights, sounds and smells that you felt like you were standing right next to her. It was very hard to read. She talks about this one mother that she saw with her baby. Susie spent most of the time at the hospital holding the little skeletal figure. The mother and the child were very sick, and at first the mother did not trust susie and would not let her pick up her daughter. As soon as the mother found out she was their to help the she let Susie hold her and out of exhaustion the mother went to sleep. Ti-Judith was the child's name and within the six hours Susie spent with her she built very strong feelings for her, as if she were her daughter. Susie had to leave the hospital, but planed to get medicine for the mother and Ti-Judith and bring it in the morning. The very next day when Susie and her guide Viximar come with the medicine TI-Judith was not in her crib, she had died in the night. Susie franticly looked for the little girl and was told she was put in the corpus room. The description of the corpus room almost made you want to vomit. The way the bodies were staked on top of each other the smell of the roughing bodies was just revolting. She searched through the room until she finally found the little girl. Susie took Ti-Judith form the room to give her a proper grave and barial. Susie explains how this first trip and bonding with Ti-Judith really changed her life, and God compelled her to start the orphanages in Haiti to save these children's lives. She then goes on in the later chapters and talks about the children she meets and the experiences she has at each orphanage.
Susie talkes about her mother and her childhood a lot. She grow up in a small rural Alabama town in the mid-1960's. She lived with her mother, father, two brothers, her two sisters and "the help" LaDora. Her mother was an undiagnosed schizophrenic, and had terrible rage problems. She would beat each of the children and even the father. Susie talked about how even the smallest thing would push their mother over the edge. At the very beginning of the chapter she talked about how much she wanted LaDora to adopted her. She loved the way she was so gentle with all the children and took great care of them. When her mothers outbreaks got so bad all the children would go to their grandparents house until she calmed down. Susie talks about, how much she loved her father and her grandparents they were not much help when it came to her mother, they could not stand up to her. She looked up to all her adult figures but Susie says the only person she really ever looked up to was her older sister, Tammy. Tammy would give Susie advice on how to deal with her parents. "'And if they know what your favorite thing is," Tammy added, "that's the first thing they take away. You gotta act like something else is what you like best. Then when they tell you they're taking it away, you gotta cry and act sad for at least a day."'Pg.23 Susie loved her mother but it was hard for her to love her when she was so sick.
Now what does saving Haiti's children and schizophrenic mothers have todo with strippers? It does't, except for one drove Susie to becoming a play boy bunny and the other took her away form that. Susie does not blame her mother for her becoming a Bunny but she does admit that having such a controlled childhood and not feeling beautiful drove her towards it. She says that being a bunny she was in total control of her life. She chose how much the camera saw and she felt beautiful. Susie also says that she still did not feel "happy." She loved what she did but something was missing. When she met her husband Joe they went to Haiti together and she says that God, Joe and the people of Haiti made her realize her real passion in life and that was to help these kids. Reading this book after doing all the research I realized that parents really do have a lot of impact of the path their children take. People think that strippers all have daddy problems but a lot of them have mommy problems as well. Reading this book did not really give me any more information on stripping but it really opened my eyes to how powerful one person can be. Susie had a dream and she made that happen and now hounders of lives have been saved.
Susie now lives in Aspen, Colorado with her husband Joe. They don't have any children of their own, but have hounders in Haiti. They spend four months of the year down in Haiti working with the children, and saving a country one child at a time.
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