Good news! The print version of my memoir, CLEAVED – A story of loss, legs and finding family, will be available from Amazon and all other outlets from 31 July 2024, RRP $34.99(AUD).
The PDF version of CLEAVED will still be available on this website for $3.99 (AUD) for those who prefer to read on their devices. The PDF version can be downloaded to your computer or other device. (Make sure you move it out of downloads to a file of your choice. Email me if you have trouble.)
Either way, you’ll be helping people with lymphatic disease, as $1 from each purchase will be donated to the USA-based Lymphatic Research and Education Network (LE&RN), the world’s leading organization for research into lymphatic disease.
CLEAVED is the story of me and my sister Juliana, and how we grew up under the same roof, each cleaved to a different parent, foot soldiers in the family war.
The situation was normal, even if I wasn’t. “Just tell them you were born that way,” my mother said when I was taunted at school for having one fat and one skinny leg.
There was no name for my “big leg”, as my mother called it, and no cure, so it was largely ignored, subsumed by the bigger family problems.
The mysterious swelling disease was later diagnosed as Milroy’s disease, a rare genetic form of lymphoedema.
The emotional cleaving became physical when our parents separated when Juliana was 18 and I was 17. I went with Mum and she went with Dad.
Six months later, an explosive discovery blew my mother and me away from my sister and the rest of the family for decades.
“They got the wrong ones. You’re like Dad,” Juliana said when we finally met again 21 years later.
A coming-of-age story and a mystery, CLEAVED is a tale of tender and fraught reunions and partings, and of how my sister and I lost and then found each other.
If you’re in Castlemaine in Central Victoria on 31 July join me for the official launch of the print version at the Tap Room, at The Mill, 9 Walker St.
I’ll be in conversation with Alisoun Downing, friend, neighbour, literature lover and English Language teacher. I’m hoping my sister Juliana will also join me. She’s been unwell, so fingers crossed she recovers by then.
Want to order a signed copy of CLEAVED direct from me? Contact me at jane.cafarella@gmail.com. (Postage $12). I’m also happy to speak to your book club, in person or via Zoom.
Click the download button above and follow the prompts to pay.
Check your email (and spam) for your receipt.
Click the word “download” on the receipt.
The PDF will appear in your “downloads” file on your computer.
Save it to the file of your choice – e.g. documents. If you leave it in “downloads”, when you open it again, it will regard it as another download and ask you to pay, as there is a download limit of one copy per purchase. If this happens, don’t pay again! Email me at jane.cafarella@gmail.com and I will help you.
Thank you everyone for your great response to the two excerpts from my memoir CLEAVED – A story of loss legs and finding family that were published in the Arts section of The Weekend Australian on April 13.
In the past week I’ve been overwhelmed. (Nearly 100 downloads!)
My gratitude to Literary Editor Caroline Overington for giving CLEAVED such a generous run and to readers for their warm responses.
‘I can’t put it down. It’s warm, honest, brilliant…‘ – Jan Harkin, Melbourne
THE STORY
THE STORY
The only family photo of us all together – with, typically, me on the left with Mum, and Juliana with Dad.
CLEAVED is the story of my sister Juliana and me, foot soldiers in the family war, each cleaved to a different parent from birth – and of the shocking betrayal that blew me and my mother apart from the rest of the family for decades.
It’s also the story resilience, a unique account of growing up with Milroy’s Disease, a rare genetic form of the progressive and incurable swelling disease that meant my right leg was a perfectly proportioned bigger version of my left.
There was no cure and no name for it so it was largely ignored. “Just tell them you were born that way,” my mother said, when I was taunted at school.
My leg problem was always secondary to the bigger family drama of family estrangement. The situation was normal even if I wasn’t.
Cleaved is a coming-of-age story, a story of forgiveness and compassion, both a tragedy and a triumph – and one which reader’s love. Perfect for Book Clubs.
Click the download button above and follow the prompts to pay.
Check your email (and spam) for your receipt.
Click the word “download” on the receipt.
The PDF will appear in your “downloads” file on your computer.
Save it to the file of your choice – e.g. documents. If you leave it in “downloads”, when you open it again, it will regard it as another download and ask you to pay, as there is a download limit of one copy per purchase. If this happens, don’t pay again! Email me at jane.cafarella@gmail.com and I will help you.
REGISTER YOUR INTEREST FOR THE PRINT VERSION
I’ve had some inquiries about a print version, so I’m exploring options for this.
If you are interested in buying a print version of CLEAVED please register your interest by emailing me at jane.cafarella@gmail.com with the word YES in the subject line.
Of course, you’re welcome to comment further in the body of the email if you wish.
What readers like you are sayingabout CLEAVED:
I have just finished reading your book. Beautifully written… I loved the ending. It was a story of forgiveness. Of course I am crying as I write this note. My heart has been deeply touched by your story. –Eileen Dieleson, Perth, Western Australia
I practically inhaled your book – I found it such a fascinating story, beautifully written. Thank you to you and Juliana for sharing so generously and openly. – Jane Haley, Hobart, Tasmania
…I am transfixed. I think it might reach into my heart. I can’t put it down– Marie McNamara, Newstead, Victoria
Fabulous!….Reluctantly putting your book aside to help with dinner – Denise Wheelan, Castlemaine, Victoria
Shamefully, I’ve been lying around all day finishing it, cause I couldn’t put it down. – Suzanne Walshe, Maldon, Victoria
…an incredible story. Beautifully written, … Personally, I found it hard to put down… – Bronnie Dean, Harcourt, Victoria
…a courageous search for a truth that reads like a compelling mystery. – Angela Ryan, South Melbourne, Victoria
Have your read CLEAVED? Would you like to comment? Send your review here jane.cafarella@gmail.com or post on The ABC Facebook Book Club or Goodreads.
Dramatic lighting is effective in the final scene of Members Only at Butler University, directed by Hannah Luciani, with Ashley Robbins as the Concierge, Jess Rullo as Karen and Maselli Desantis as Gabriel.
One of the big problems about being a writer is isolation. Unlike playing music or acting, writing is a solitary activity.
Even if you work in a café, as I often do, people are cautious about interrupting – or in my case, scared off by my intense look of scowling concentration.
But in the past 18 months, I’ve unintentionally found one simple solution to writer isolation – making some of my work free.
Since October 2022, when I first took the paywall off my website for my short plays and monologues, my work has been performed in 29 locations around the world – mostly by emerging actors and directors in the USA, the UK, Canada, Ireland and Australia. (I use Pinmaps, an online interactive map service, to keep track of where it all goes.)
The only condition for use is that people let me know when, where and how my work will be used and send photos and feedback.
Members Only, my most popular free short play – about a woman who makes it to the pearly gates, only to find she doesn’t know the password – has been performed in Mt Barker, South Australia, and in the USA in Oregon, Wisconsin, Indiana and Arkansas, with performances in Texas and in the Huon Valley in Hobart, Tasmania next month.
Members Only has also been submitted for a New Director Workshop, in Virginia (USA) along with three other short plays that are available for free on my website.
What I receive in return is priceless – connection with emerging and established actors, and directors – young and old – all over the world, and the satisfaction that I’m helping other artists grow and learn.
The actors and directors who use my free short plays and monologues mostly aren’t professionals.Mostly, they are female actors who are emerging, or re-emerging, or drama teachers and students.
Hannah Luciana, a junior theatre major at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, who directed Members Only in December 2023 for her final project in her directing class, said: “I loved the humour and characters and felt it would be a great way for me to grow as student learning directing.”
The purpose of the project was to practise casting, learn how to conduct rehearsals, interpret the text and then showcase the work to fellow students and the faculty in a free presentation at the end of the semester.
“In total honesty, directing this show was such a positive and educational experience for me! I loved the comedic aspects, of course, but also loved connecting them with the tangible aspects of religious figures and ideas – it gave the cast and myself material to build from which was great for our short time frame,” Hannah said.
The opening scene of Members Only, produced by Emily Golden at Bismarck High School, Arkansas, showing Karen, arriving at the pearly gates, to find the Concierge, who is the gatekeeper.
Anne Marie Serano, Artistic Director at Acting Out Troupe in Mt Barker, South Australia, was looking for material for the inaugural performance for a newly formed theatre group, which began with just six “senior ladies who got together and decided they wanted to have fun”.
They chose Members Only as part of their first show, titled Senior Moments, performed in the Mt Barker library to a sold-out audience last November, followed by an encore performance in December.
Anne Marie, who has a Masters degrees in Social Work and Drama, said the group would now expand to include general community members “not just older ladies”.
“I was very active in the community theatre in the US. Since coming to Australia it has taken me 12 years to find my place in an acting/directing capacity. Being a part of the conception and the building of the Acting Out Troupe has been so rewarding. I finally feel totally at home in Australia. The members of this Troupe are warm, friendly and inviting. This has truly been a milestone in my personal and professional life.”
And mine.
When Acting Out Secretary, Pat Pearson, (who played Gabriel in the play), came to visit me in Castlemaine last month, she had a list of questions about the play, which helped me improve it. (See the tweaked version here, with my other free short plays: https://janecafarella.com.au/ten-minute-plays/)
Gabriel, who appears with a trumpet, is the most popular character in Members Only.
Emily Golden, a sponsor of the drama club at Bismarck High School in Arkansas, which produced the play for a short play festival in December 2023, said: “It was an audience favourite, for sure. Everyone loved our Gabriel as well. We had him enter with a trumpet and play terribly, so everyone loved it.”
Here’s a great photo of Pat Pearson as Gabriel, also playing badly, in the Acting Out Troupe debut. (Scroll down for another great interpretation of Gabriel – Maselli Desantis in the Butler University Production in Arkansas.)
Pat Pearson blows her own trumpet as Gabriel in Acting Out Troupes’ production Senior Moments, in Mt Barker, South Australia, directed by Anne Marie Serano.
I understand the importance of artists being paid for their work. I have two full length plays, a musical and a one act comedy which are licensed with agents, and for which I receive royalties when they are produced.
Uked! –the first play-along ukulele musical, which had two sell-out seasons in Central Victoria, Australia in 2019, will be produced by Libretto Productions in Auckland, New Zealand, in August 2024, and Supersnout, my one-act comedy about a talking dog, will be produced in May by the Lithgow Theatre Company in New South Wales, and by the Kegworth Players in Derby, in the UK. Supersnout has previously been performed in Melbourne, (Victoria) Toodjay (WA), Aberdeen, (Scotland) and Stratford Upon Avon (UK).
But if, like me, you are in the later part of your career, and you can afford to pay it forward, there are enormous rewards in making some of your work free for those who will benefit.
Acting Out Troupe’s media officer, Lynn Bonython sums it up perfectly: “It’s about connecting with audiences and sharing our human experience.”
Maselli Desantis as Gabriel in the Butler University production of Members Only in Arkansas, USA
Here are some helpful Book Club discussion questions, information and reviews for CLEAVED – A story of loss legs and finding family, a memoir by JANE CAFARELLA
Written with compassion and humour CLEAVED is an illuminating story about losing and finding family and growing up “different”.
Available as PDF on this site or a print version from Amazon and all usual outlets CLEAVED is
A sister story – of two little girls “cleaved” from each other from birth
An immigration story – from the tiny island of Salina, Italy, in the 1920s during the first Italian diaspora
A family estrangement story – a family torn apart by an explosive discovery
A disability story of resilience and acceptance
A story about the healing power of music
A Melbourne story – beginning in 1950s to the present day
A modern tragedy and a triumph
Scroll down for Book Club discussion questions and more information
Here’s what readers like you are saying about CLEAVED
I just finished it. I’m in bits. Such a beautiful story. Forgiveness, the connections, devoid of sentimentality, yet the humanity – the flawed humans – have touched me. Thank you for a great read!
Susie Penrice Tyrie, Singapore
I have just finished reading your book. Beautifully written… I loved the ending. It was a story of forgiveness. Of course I am crying as I write this note. My heart has been deeply touched by your story.
Eileen Dieleson, Perth, Western Australia
I practically inhaled your book – I found it such a fascinating story, beautifully written. Thank you to you and Juliana for sharing so generously and openly.
Jane Haley, Hobart, Tasmania
I am transfixed. I think it might reach into my heart. I can’t put it down.
Marie McNamara, Newstead
Shamefully, I’ve been lying around all day finishing it, cause I couldn’t put it down.
Suzanne Walshe, Maldon
…an incredible story. Beautifully written, … Personally, I found it hard to put down…
Bronnie Dean, Harcourt
…a courageous search for a truth that reads like a compelling mystery.
Angela Ryan, South Melbourne
I cried reading it today. I think it’s just beautiful writing and honesty. It was such a joy to read.
The photo Jane was once so ashamed of: aged 13 in high school. Although she is smiling, she hid the photo in a drawer, where it stayed. Until now.
CLEAVED is the story of Jane and her sister Julie, foot soldiers in the family war, each cleaved to a different parent from birth – and of the shocking betrayal that blows Jane apart from the rest of the family for decades.
It’s also a story of resilience, a unique account of growing up with Milroy’s Disease, a rare genetic form of the progressive and incurable swelling disease lymphoedema – resulting in Jane’s right leg being a perfectly proportioned bigger version of her left.
There’s no cure and no name for it, so it’s largely ignored. “Just tell them you were born that way,” Mum says, when she is taunted at school.
Jane’s leg problem is secondary to the bigger family drama of family estrangement. The situation is normal even if Jane isn’t.
The story begins in 1970s Melbourne, after the family’s emotional cleaving has become physical and Jane and her mother have moved to a small flat – leaving Dad and her rebellious sister Julie in the family home.
It’s 17-year-old Jane’s job to ferry messages between the warring households.
Alone in the flat on a wintery Saturday night, Mum is once again telling Jane how her sister hates her – recounting how Julie severed the top of Jane’s finger when she was a baby.
But Jane isn’t listening. She knows all these stories by heart.
She takes up the story, going back to when the cleaving first begins, and how she becomes Mum’s confidant and Julie’s enemy, and the moment that cleaves Jane from the rest of the family for decades.
Over the years, Jane tries to replace her lost family with serial marriage, while undergoing pioneering surgeries to reduce her expanding leg.
Eventually, she becomes a journalist and cartoonist and creates a perfect family of her own – so perfect she even writes a weekly column about it in Melbourne’s Age newspaper.
But the old family comes back when after 21 years, at Mum’s insistence, Jane reunites with Julie – now Juliana.
“They got the wrong ones. You’re like Dad,” Juliana says when they finally meet.
And so begins the questioning, the unravelling and the comparing of events and stories; of tender and fraught reunions and partings between Jane and her father and sister, until Jane finally puts the pieces of the puzzle together, examining everyone’s part in the family tragedy, including her own.
Cleaved is a coming-of-age story, a story of forgiveness and compassion and the healing power of music – a family tragedy and a triumph, and one which reader’s love.
$1 from every $3.99 purchase goes to the USA-based leading organisation for lymphatic diseases the Lymphatic Education and Research Network (LE&RN). Today 250 million people worldwide suffer from lymphatic disease, which is still widely misunderstood.
HAVING TROUBLE DOWNLOADING? Email me and I’ll sort it promptly! – jane.cafarella@gmail.com.
BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
How did you feel when you finished the book?
Did you feel satisfied with the ending?
What did you think of the writing?
Did you relate to Jane as the main character? If so, why?
Discuss the dual meaning of the word Cleaved and how it fits with the book. How does Cleaved explore the theme of estrangement?
Why do you think family was so important to Jane?
Why do you think everyone ignored Jane’s “big leg”. Do you agree with Jane’s conclusion? (p.197)
Do you agree with Juliana when she said, “They got the wrong ones”? (p.126)
How would you describe Jane’s relationship with Mum?
Did you agree with Mum that Jane was “very well adjusted?”
How would you describe Juliana’s relationship with Dad?
Which sister was better off? Jane with Mum or Juliana with Dad?
What did you think about the relationship between the sisters? Did it make your reflect on your own relationships with your siblings?
Do you agree with Dad’s view of forgiveness? (p.188)
Do you agree with Dad’s view of the truth? How does this relate to, or inform, the writing of memoir? (p.182)
Did you know anything about lymphoedema before reading the book? How did the book inform your view of people suffering from deformity?
Discuss the role that music plays throughout the book, and in bringing the sisters together.
In the end, the Jane uncovers some family secrets and finds answers to questions that have haunted her from childhood. Did you relate to this?
What was your favourite scene?
Which part of the story moved you most?
What part was the most surprising?
Which part made you laugh?
Would you recommend this book? If so, to whom?
Contact Jane here (email) if you’d like her to come and speak at your Book Club in person (Melbourne) or via zoom?
Here are 11 NEW monologues for women over 40 to showcase their acting talents
These new monologues are completely FREE – as long as you let me know when, where and how you are using them, so I can keep track of my work. Photos and feedback are also appreciated.
In the past 18 months, my monologues for women over 40 have been performed in many states in the USA, including, Oregon, Wisconsin, Iowa, Virginia, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, California, Florida and New Jersey, as well as in Toronto and Ontario in Canada, and London and Newhamptonshire in the UK.
My short plays have also been produced by drama teachers and students all over the USA, and in New Zealand and Australia. My one act comedy Supersnout, is currently in production by the Lithgow Theatre Group in South Bowenfels, NSW, for a two-week season in May
Throughout history, it’s common to read about the experiences of men, as leaders and conquerors.
I like to write about the experiences of women – ordinary women and their feelings and personal battles. It’s my way of recording women’s history.
My aim is to give older actresses in particular, material that is strong and relatable to help showcase their talents in auditions, reels, workshops and performances.
Older women’s lives are so rich with experience that it’s a joy to write about them and for them. I didn’t start writing plays until I was in my 50s, so I understand how exciting and daunting this stage of life can be.
Click on the links below to read and download the monologues.
Let me know what you think by commenting here or emailing me directly at jane.cafarella@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you!
