My Family and Other Hazards: A Memoir

June Melby's memoir recounts her family's experience owning and operating Tom Thumb Miniature Golf, a family-run course in a small Wisconsin town. When Melby was ten, her parents decided to purchase the miniature golf course where they had vacationed, and without business experience or outside employees, the family opened it to the public. The memoir describes the family's efforts to build the course together, including the design and creation of each hole's hazards, alongside the typical pleasures of summer—snowcones, popcorn, and time spent with loved ones. Melby's relationship with the course was complicated from the start, as it limited her summer freedom. Years later, as an adult living in Hollywood, she learns her parents plan to sell the course. Her unexpected panic prompts her to return and help run it before the sale closes. As the deadline approaches, she reflects on what the course meant to her as both a child and adult, the era it represents, and the difficulty of losing a childhood home, even after leaving it behind.