Author Description

In August of 1945 the Marchenia family took up residence in a home on Seven Mile Road on the East Side of Detroit. It was a home with a potbellied stove and a generous front porch, lilac bushes and shade trees. It was a time when children spent their days flying kites, and watching clouds, and their evenings chasing fireflies and gazing at the stars. It was a golden period of childhood. On Seven Mile Road is a story about growing up in the forties and fifties. It is a story about growing up in Detroit. And yet it is much more than either of these. It is a story about growing up at a time in America when life was simpler, gentler, when extended families lived close together, when people had less material wealth, but greater spiritual wealth. Nancy Marchenia Stevens has written a moving memoir about a time that many of us remember and long to revive. For her, The memories of Seven Mile Road are my touchstone. All of my life I have been writing this story in my head. It is not my life story, though telling it will reveal much about my life. My story is about a family. And it is my hope that from the bits and pieces woven together by characters and happenings, a family will emerge-my family, the Marchenias.