Customer Reviews

The Drownt Boy: An Ozark Tale

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Homer utilizes his poetry (Skies of Such Valuable Glass, What We Did After the Rain, Tattoos) to create a new way of writing creative non-fiction. The scope of the slim volume is stunning in that Homer distills the Ozark sociology, discusses Ozark's dialect, and describes the bonds between step-dad and son.

The beauty of the writing is what hooked me, and I liked Homer's take on the Ozarks, it helped me to understand this strange land in which I had lived for several years. The people have to be tough to live and work here. The terrible summers and ticks and fleas are hard on children and animals. Ice storms freeze people home for days, several tims a winter, yet, to look at it from the comfort of home or car, one thinks of Britain's greens and forests, it's beautiful lakes and rolling hills. It looks like a soft rich land, from the window, but it is a harsh land, with hardy people who deliberately practice suspicion of strangers, and who are, mostly from British stock, and who still speak in the Elizabethen Dialect. Ozarks people pushed further into the wilderness from the Appalachians, and it has only been fifty years that passable roads have been built through them, bringing tourists and retirees who have changed and are changing the Ozarks. Homer in Drownt Boy, reveals why people leave the Ozarks, and sometimes, why they come back. A super read, a book to be kept forever.