Cordelia Street: My Neighborhood A Memoir

Be ready for a deep dive into a neighborhood filled with an amazing mix of persons, all given equal standing and respect, whether rich or poor, normal or disturbed, intelligent or challenged.

The setting is Cordelia Street in West Tampa, Florida in the 1940s. The Florida Crackers work and drink hard, are poor but poverty stricken. Down the street are the Cubans, with a culture of gambling, easy money, and cigar-smoking Mafioso. Always the cigars.

Carolyn’s the child of a Florida Cracker mother and a Cuban Mafia father. The drama of this marriage and its shattering dissolution plays out in the warp and weft of the neighborhood. What emerges is a beautiful tapestry of triumph and gratitude.

A clinical psychologist for over forty years, Carolyn Mendez Shertzer, Ph.D, knows firsthand the impact of sexual abuse, neglect, and poverty. Read this book if you want a deeper understanding of the plight of a child caught in such a web. Simple, human connections can make a crucial, life-saving difference. Every page brings the reader closer to knowing what it’s like to be a heroine or a hero to an abused child. Make no mistake: there’s a Carolyn in your neighborhood.