num_pages: 400
description: Welcome to the childhood of Catherine McClure Gildiner. It is the mid-1950s in Lewiston, New York, a sleepy town near Niagara Falls. Divorce is unheard of, mothers wear high heels to the beauty salon, and television has only just arrived.At the tender age of four, Cathy accompanies Roy, the deliveryman at her father's pharmacy, on his routes. She shares some of their memorable deliveries-sleeping pills to Marilyn Monroe (in town filming Niagara), sedatives to Mad Bear, a violent Tuscarora chief, and fungus cream to Warty, the gentle operator of the town dump. As she reaches her teenage years, Cathy's irrepressible spirit spurs her from dangerous sled rides that take her "too close to the Falls" to tipsy dances with the town priest.
language: English
title: Too Close to the Falls: A Memoir
titlecomplete: Too Close to the Falls: A Memoir
genres: Biography, Book Club, Canada, Memoir, Nonfiction, Humor, Adult, Autobiography, Biography Memoir, New York
ratings_count: 3628
publisher: Penguin Books