"The next morning in Alpena, Michigan, lying exhausted in bed in yet another strange (but oh so familiar) motel room, I think about my life-our lives, Bart's and mine. Touring from town to town-no health insurance, no steady jobs, no children, no insurance of any kind against the dark forces in the world. " "Hanging Off the Edge" is an extraordinary journey into the mind and life of one of America's most creative women, Priscilla McLean. McLean shares her precarious cliff-edge existence as a classical avant-garde troubadour and the day-by-day tour of the world through Europe, Asia, and Australia. She also writes of her touching story, from growing up in a middle-class family fallen on hard times during World War II to her seemingly settled life as a college professor's wife. McLean's quotes from her extensive journals, kept over a twenty-five-year span of time, give an immediacy and poignancy to "Hanging Off the Edge."
Mingled with these memories are original short poems, philosophical thoughts on the artist's life, and a whole section where McLean explores how, over the span of thirty-five years, thirteen special musical creations were born and placed before the world.