Customer Reviews

From the Hidewood: Memories of a Dakota Neighborhood (Midwest Reflections)

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4 star:		(2)
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I grew up two miles and one generation away from the setting of this story. It brought back childhood memories of familiar locations and names. The author uses an interesting technique of telling the story with different points of view in each chapter. It makes for enjoyable reading even though it's a mostly fiction story based on real characters. The author's POV is used often enough to bring out the emotions of a coming-of-age story and the social aspects of mid-Thirties farm life. There are many similarities between this Hidewood memoir and mine, "A Farm in the Hidewood: My South Dakota Home."

My mother grew up in South Dakota and the stories she told me about the little school house, walking to school, weather, the people, and more are recreated in this wonderful book. It feels like I get to relive a part of her life. It is well written and the author pulled me into the story making wish I didn't have to close the cover.

I grew up in the Hidewood area and I have purchased some copies of this book as gifts which were given to old friends. The book is well written, factual, reasonably documented for a work of this sort, contains many names I recognize, and it provides an accurate verbal picture of life in this small part of the country during that period of time. I do not know the author, but his style certainly fits comfortably with the culture he describes. This is rural South Dakota depicted as I also recall it, and it has been written by one of our own. There is another author, Jim Roth, who has published a book titled "Memories of Estelline" which describes this same small region a couple of decades later in a series of short essays. However, I suspect books of this sort will be of interest to a rather limited population.