Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl delivers a treat as delicious as oatmeal cookies hot out of the oven - a memoir of a happy childhood. In charming and memorable vignettes, Carol Bodensteiner captures rural life in middle America, in the middle of the 20th Century. Bodensteiner grew up on a family-owned dairy farm in the 1950s, a time when a family could make a good living on 180 acres. In these pages you can step back and relish a time simple but not easy, a time innocent yet challenging. If you grew up in rural America, these stories will trigger your memories and your senses, releasing a wealth of stories of your own. If the rural Midwest is foreign territory to you, Carol s stories will invite you into a fascinating and disappearing world.
Carol Bodensteiner was born (1948) in Maquoketa, Iowa, and raised on her family's dairy farm in eastern Iowa, between Maquoketa and Preston.
Carol's first book, "Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl," a memoir about her childhood on the farm was published in 2008. In her memoir, Carol preserves in words for her son and generations to follow this natural, deeply textured way of life that has been nearly lost in our country.
In 2010, she joined 170 other writers in a collaborative project on the state of social media. "The Age of Conversation 3" explores the shift of social media from the hypothetical to a staple in the modern marketing toolbox.
Carol earned her undergraduate degree in speech and English education from the University of Northern Iowa and her master's degree in mass communication from Drake University.
Since 1999, Carol has worked as an independent consultant and freelance writer. She consults with agribusiness and higher education clients, teaches writing as an adjunct professor at Drake University, and writes for her own projects and as a freelance writer.
Prior to 1999, Carol was editor of an agribusiness magazine and spent 23 years as public relations advisor to clients at two agencies. For 10 years, she was the president of CMF&Z Public Relations, one of the Midwest's largest business-to-business public relations firms.
Since following her heart into creative writing, Carol has been a frequent participant in the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival.
Visit Carol's website at: www.carolbodensteiner.com and read her blog at www.JustWalkingThisEarth.blogspot.com
