Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir – Book Review

Friends in my exercise class often share tidbits of information and recommendations:

• a good Netflix movie (The Wife with Glen Close)
• a favorite series (Last Tango in Halifax)
• an alternative to a pumice stone for removing a mineral ring inside a toilet bowl (220 grit 3M Drywall-Sanding screen—see image)
• a favorite Hogtown restaurant (Scoula’s on NW 34^th Street, Gainesville, FL)
• a humorous book (Lessons in Chemistry, a novel)

After learning that I like to read and write memoirs, a new acquaintance in my exercise class recommended Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir. She said it was set in her home state of Connecticut and was popular there. I had never heard of the book or its author, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith, but I found its description on Amazon:

“Smith seamlessly combines a memoir whose intimacy matches that of Angela’s Ashes with the tale of a community plagued by a malevolent predator that holds the emotional and cultural resonance of The Lovely Bones….”

Although the author’s name did not show up in red type on Amazon’s website to indicate she had an Author Page, I eventually found it—Mary-Ann Tirone Smith—and learned that she had also written several murder mystery novels.

Satisfied that I wanted to read her memoir, I went to abebooks.com, found a used copy for $4.68 (including shipping), and ordered it. A-B-E in abebooks.com derives from its original name: Advanced Book Exchange. Launched in Canada in the 1990s, this online retailer specializes in used, rare, and out-of-print books.

It’s where I found a coveted copy of William Bradford Huie’s Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee County Jail about the murder of our family doctor, who’d saved my sister’s life. I had wanted to read the book since childhood, but when the true story was published in 1956, the State of Florida banned it, saying it was “too racially charged.” What’s the saying? The more things change, the more they stay the same.

But I’ve digressed. Let’s get back to Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir.

Mary-Ann Tirone Smith describes her life in the 1950s as similar to that of other children then living in small-town America where neighborhood kids played in the street until dark and nobody locked their doors. In reality, her life was much different from that of her friends because of her older brother, Tyler. He was autistic before anyone understood autism. A paragraph in a book review in The New York Times describes how Tyler’s autism impacted his life and Mary-Ann’s:

“One morning when she was 4, Mary-Ann … burned her leg on a toaster, branding the first three letters of Wearever onto her calf. But instead of shrieking in pain like a normal little girl, she clamped her hands over her mouth. Loud noise was verboten in [her] household; it sent her autistic older brother into fits ….”

Mary-Ann, who calls herself Mickey in the book, experienced times when crying might have helped ease her pain and heartbreak, but she could never cry because of her brother’s unusual response to it.

While her story could have been sad and scary, it is told in such a way that I often found myself laughing out loud, just as I did when I read Frank McCourt’s sad tale, Angela’s Ashes, another of my favorite memoirs.

In Smith’s book, between chapters that describe her childhood, she inserts short chapters about a total stranger, Robert Nelson Malm, born on the opposite side of the continent, who grows up to become a child molester and makes his way to her Connecticut neighborhood where he commits more crimes.

After reading the book, I wanted to know more about the author and what happened to Robert Nelson Malm, so I checked out Smith’s website. I learned there that, in 2021, the governor of Connecticut thanked Mary-Ann Tirone Smith for writing this book, which helped bring about justice, not for the criminal but for a young girl who helped solve his heinous crime.

Connecticut Governor John Davis Lodge had offered a reward of $3000 for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for the crime. A young girl came forward, and her identification of the person helped lead to his arrest. Yet the State would not release the reward money. At a ceremony in 2021, Governor Ned Lamont made it right. A video of that ceremony can be seen on Mary-Ann Tirone Smith’s website. But read the book first.

Smith’s story and her last line in Girls of Tender Age will stay with me forever.