Most people have years of happy memories that keep their families in their hearts. Carmen Mitzi Sinnott has a snapshot.

Mitzi's picture is one of a splintered family, a broken man and a rocky era, but she's using it to begin to heal.

In 2003, Mitzi, a former Ironton resident, was asked to perform in an anti-war rally to take place in New York City. In preparation, she had to question everything she knew about war, a journey that led to "SNAPSHOT," a one-woman show that is now taking her to the largest arts festival in the world.

Mitzi began her performance career when she was just a tot, watching her mother, Yvonne DeKay Sinnott, work in the dance studio in Kentucky that she has since relocated to Ironton.

As a young woman, Mitzi traveled to New York to find her fortune as a dancer before two torn Achilles tendons cut her dreams short. Not one to be deterred, she continued to work in the city as a director of an after-school arts program.

It was during this latest chapter in her life she received the call to take place in the rally, a call that would take her back to where it all began.

As Mitzi tried to sort out her own thoughts on war, she found herself drawn to a scrapbook her mother had made for her, one of the few items that helped her feel connected to her father who was a casualty of the Vietnam War.

Mitzi's father did not leave his life on the battlefield, but his mind. He returned home to his young family a shell of his former self.

Yvonne DeKay and her young daughter made an attempt to live with the battle-scarred veteran in Hawaii after he returned home.

"He was very schizophrenic, and he just couldn't pull himself together," Yvonne DeKay said. "He would just sit and meditate all day. At night he would jump and flinch, and I told him that he had to get himself together. But he just couldn't."

As Mitzi flipped through her photo album, she began to see war through the eyes of her father. Finally, she realized what she knew about war: she knew that it had taken her father from her.

Through a stream of tears, Mitzi wrote "SNAPSHOT" in one night.

She performs several characters in the show, including herself, her mother and even her father, whom she actually traveled to Hawaii to find and has since visited several times, though he has little memory of her.

"SNAPSHOT" is not just a story of love and war. The play also deals with racism and how a relationship between her mother, a caucasian, and her father, an African-American, was viewed during the tumultuous 1960s.

In some ways, it is also the story of her childhood in Appalachia, one that was troubled as Mitzi was torn between two races. Though she had a difficult youth, she said that after more than 14 years in New York, it is her roots in Appalachia that help keep her grounded.

"I really think that because we're such fighters down there, and since we're so brassy, and we're so straightforward, I think that's why I've been successful in New York," Mitzi said. "I think that's why I've been able to maintain myself in New York."

After years of hard work in the Big Apple, Mitzi is finally having acclaim heaped on her. Perhaps most prestigious is "SNAPSHOT" netting an invite to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, the largest arts festival in the world, taking place Aug. 7-29.

The performance artist admitted that she was somewhat nervous about the reception the show, rich with so many American themes, would play with an international audience.

She was hopeful, however, that the larger issues of the show would be enough to win audiences over.

"I think the piece is most importantly about our human experience, about love and loss, more than it is about war, even though that's the over-arching question," Mitzi said. "It really goes deeper, to loving your family, loving yourself, trying to figure yourself out. Everybody can relate to that."

Mitzi is enjoying more success than she ever had, and now traveling further than she ever has before. It is a staggering vein of joy to be found in such a grim rock of suffering.

"The thing is, the Achilles heel or tragedy in my life, ends up being my gift, and it's really surprising," she said. "It seems like everything I've tried with it has worked out, so we'll see if that continues over there."

Mitzi will continue her journey the way she began it, with her mother, as the two fly to Scotland this weekend.