The house depicted on the cover is on 6th Street in Parma, Idaho. It was known as “the big yellow house,” and was once owned by C. Ben Ross, the first native born governor of Idaho. It was purchased by Lou and Marcy Emery when they bought the Farmers Insurance Agency in Parma in 1963. It is here they raised their four children, the oldest of whom would be killed in Vietnam in 1970.
Angie Sarich grew up in Parma and graduated from Parma High, as did her brothers and all the children in her mother’s family. She graduated from Seattle Pacific University in 2000 with a degree in English. Her senior year she worked as a layout editor on the university’s student newspaper, The Falcon. She was awarded the Eastern Washington University graduate departmental grant for creative nonfiction. Her memoir, Leaving Parma, investigates the nature of loss and its effect on the human spirit by exploring the stories of three generations of her family, and of the people of the small town of Parma.
Leaving Parma is now available at Boise’s favorite independent bookstore, the Rediscovered Bookshop.