Rose Cherami: Gathering Fallen Petals, by Dr. Michael Marcades                            with Norma Kirkpatrick

 

In Rose Cherami: Gathering Fallen Petals, Marcades gathers, and then snaps into place, the pieces of a misspent life by the woman he only vaguely knew as his mother. A woman who, just prior to President John Kennedy’s visit to Dallas on November 22, 1963, announced to a Louisiana State Police officer that men she had been traveling with—men who, like she, worked for Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby—were going to “kill Kennedy when he comes to Dallas.” Did letting that explosive secret slip lead to her death less than two years later? Your guess is as good as any.

 

Imagine you never really knew you mother, that when you were barely old enough to know who she was, she left you with your grandparents to raise, and that she died while you were still a young boy. Growing up, you heard bits and pieces of information about her. Vague comments, rich with subtext but poverty-stricken in detail. “Whispers” about “mysterious absences” and “hints that she was an unsettled soul who chose the wrong role in life.”

 

Wouldn’t you want to know more, to find the missing pieces and fit them together to fill out a complete picture of the woman who gave you life?

 

Now imagine that, as a grown man, you devote yourself to uncovering the mystery that was your mother. To find the missing pieces—to discover who she was, to better understand who you are and where you came from. But what if those additional pieces paint a far darker picture than you ever imagined? Drug mule. Addict. Prostitute. Thief. Insane. You don’t even know what name to call her, as she went by so many, starting with her birth name of Melba Christine—“Crit” for short—and ending with Rose. Rose Cherami. The name she bore as she lay dying on an east Texas highway.

 

So, what do you do? Do you stop digging, delete the bad, and try to just remember the good? Or do you continue to search? To find the truth. But will the truth really set you free? Or will it chain you to a sordid past, even if it’s not your own?

 

That’s the dilemma Dr. Michael Marcades faced as he began his journey to learn about his mother’s tragic life. The picture that emerged was both devastating and fascinating at the same time. And it placed his mother squarely in the middle of one of this country’s greatest crimes: The assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

 

In Rose Cherami: Gathering Fallen Petals, Marcades gathers, and then snaps into place, the pieces of a misspent life by the woman he only vaguely knew as his mother. A woman who, just prior to President John Kennedy’s visit to Dallas on November 22, 1963, announced to a Louisiana State Police officer that men she had been traveling with—men who, like she, worked for Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby—were going to “kill Kennedy when he comes to Dallas.” Did that explosive secret lead to her death less than two years later? Your guess is as good as any.

 

Now the plot thickens. It’s a conspiracy theorist’s dream, but it begs the question: What if it’s not just a theory; what if it’s real? And how does that play into Rose’s own tragic, and mysterious death, on that lonely east Texas highway less than two years later? Accident? Or murder?

 

Written in the style of a novel, mixing fiction to fill missing gaps in a meticulously researched record of fact, Rose Cherami: Gathering Fallen Petals tells the story of an imperfect woman as narrated by a loving son. The facts of Rose’s life surely must have been painful to uncover, but Marcades ensures that her story is, in fact told, with all her secrets laid bare, and that she is not just a footnote to a piece of history. Rather, she is a living, breathing contradiction who, like the rest of us, is neither all bad nor all good.

 

Though Rose’s journey may have started with promise, it took a wrong turn somewhere and ended in tragedy. But no life is totally wasted. Marcades is Rose’s living legacy. He is the proof that she passed through this world and left something good behind. “I know, in the eyes of many, she was a woman of questionable character who lived a bizarre life,” he says. “Nevertheless, she gave me life, and in spite of her absence, or perhaps because of her absence, I have done my best to live it well.”

 

Marcades then concludes this about his own journey of self-discovery through discovering his mother’s tragic journey: “Though I can’t return to the past, or change it in any way, it brings me some degree of peace to have shared the experiences of my life with others who perhaps are looking for the same peace and acceptance within their own ambivalent lives.”

 

And that’s a journey worth taking.

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Mike Farris

Acclaimed author, retired attorney, adjunct professor of Constitutional Law

and Entertainment Law at University of Texas - Arlington

Reviewer for New York JOURNAL OF BOOKS

Dallas, Texas