Customer Reviews

Homesick: A Memoir

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(2)
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2 star:		(3)
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In this book, put down your palm pilot and enter the world of the south, fishing with a pole, good old southern food, and loving family values. Using her own life experiences Sela teaches you that no matter what happens in your life you can always come home and find comfort in your roots. Her heartwarming tales will cause huge laughs and many tears. You may even find yourself picking up the phone and calling Mom and Dad once you finish, I know that I did. Sela may be an inspiration to many as an amazing actress, but she is also a person who has a real life, and she opens up that life with a warm heart and a hug. Her thoughtful words are ones that I know will touch your soul. So snuggle up with a good blanket and a cup of tea in front of the fire and enjoy.

Go down south with Mississippi born actress Sela Ward. Homesick is a refreshing look at the everyday life of a young girl as she moves from small town life to young adulthood in New York and then settles in Hollywood.

Sela shares the story of her family stating, "The Wards have always walked a fine line between conviction and orneriness..." She admires her father and her mother. She talks much of the way she grew up as a southern girl, the south's traditions and the legacies, girl talk sessions, cliques, church, the family restaurant, charm school and even hanging at the local Quik Stop. It's rather refreshing that the book focuses on the positives of life.

Sela speaks of her own life, though not with Hollywood spectacles on. She shares her climb to success but does not allow it to take over the entire telling of her story. Her claim to fame is only part of her. Her family, her history, her place of birth are so much more.

Homesick also touches on issues such as racism in the South, the tragedy of September 11, overindulged children and drugs. The book also details Sela's mother's death and the hardship on the family.

The book is generously sprinkled with photographs which tell a story themselves. You'll see the young Sela, the model, the actress, but mostly you'll see the real Sela Ward, the one who stood at her mother's knee and listened to the stories of her family.

Don't we all cling to memories of our roots? Sela Wards's sensitive, personal explanation of her longing to maintain her Southern roots while maintaining balance in her family life with a loving husband and children in Hollywood is a sign post for all us. Not the 'tell all' Hollywood insider story that will generate salacious headlines...but a deeply personal and touching remembrance of Ms. Wards upbringing and the special values that help define her role as a parent, spouse and personality. What a great read!!

Homesick isn't your typical autobiography...Sela brings such a personal touch to the words that you will feel like you are sitting in the room with her; as she shares pivotal yet personal life experiences with you.

You are in the car with her as she leaves home for the first time to attend college...she'll make you crave her aunts homemade preserves...and will allow you to emotionally embrace her through the private final moments of her mother's life...

Homesick is an honest look into a complex life that yearns for simplicity...a glimpse into a soul which is even more beautiful than the face that graces magazines and television. When you finish the book you will feel as if you made a new friend...and have an aching desire to pick up the phone and call home.

Sela Ward's Homesick is such a warm, touching and engaging book, that I could not put it down. It shows a very personal side of a very public person that makes you want to see her continue her success. While a big time celebrity, Sela seems to be a real person, interested in helping other people and in using her celebrity status to do good works. She has obviously stayed in touch with her hometown and her past and wants to make sure that she passes on her Southern Heritage to her children. Causes you to stop and think about what is really important in life. A must read!

The memoir of a beautiful woman who went to NY City and then
Hollywood but longed to go home again.
A person can never really go home again, as another Southerner,
Thomas Wolfe wrote, but Sela Ward tried very hard to duplicate
her upbringing,when she married and had two chidren.
This is a book of a woman who developed in Meridian,Miss-
issippi;during the 1960's and 1970's.Her family isn't perfect
but they are good people.
A younger Sela neede more in her life to express her ambitions so she moved away.What she also found was she also needed
stability and family.
Unable to have a realistic family life in Hollywood-she
and her husband Howard Sherman set about building a new family home back in Meridan, Mississippi.Here they are surrounded by Sela's close relatives and their children are
able to lead a more rustic life.As often as possible they
reside in comfort and live here.
This is unlike any Hollywood story.People respect each
other and help one another.
It is refreshing to read about a Hollywood star, who is just like other ordinary folks.Her lovely Southern charm comes
through in the telling of her Family's customs.

I have admired and respected Sela's talent and beauty in both Sisters and Once & Again. I have a special place in my heart for the "era" she writes about in both Mississippi and Alabama.

Last week, I bought "Homesick," and I want to give Sela a superb review. She wrote much of what is in my own heart. I am from the south and Sela and I were in Tuscaloosa at the same time. This is why I feel such regards for her book. The part about Alabama and Bear Bryant makes me so proud of my heritage. I have spent many hours thinking about my family, friends and maybe someday a permanent return to the south.

Her excerpt made me stop and think... Why I left in the first place and if moving back is really feasible. Sela states that some times your dreams are too big to stay in the same place. Sometimes dreams are too big for Tuscaloosa or a small town in North Carolina. I took her advice to heart and reflected on the reasons I left in the first place.

Since I left the Druid City, I have lived in Utah and Colorado. My heart may be in the south but my husband and I now live in very small village in Vermont. Sometimes, we just have to get out, go on an adventure and follow our dreams.

As I watch Bama play football on TV, I remember those days, getting all dressed up in my Sunday best, walking down 10th Street, now Bryant Drive, pass The Corner Drugstore as the Million Dollar Band played, "Yea, Alabama". Definitely, if you have football, sweet tea, grits, catfish, hush puppies, The Waysider and Dreamland on your mind you will return someday.

Thanks you, Sela for helping me tap into all those hidden memories. !!!!!!! Roll Tide Roll !!!!!!!

In the tradition of Southern storytelling, Ms. Ward shares her life experiences in a manner that paints literary pictures that are larger than life. It may appear, at first, that the sentimental story will simply end up a Hollywood tall tale. But the skill in which it is written lulls the reader into hearfelt longings of comfort that touch all of us. What she speaks of is HOME not only of location, but of the heart.

It is not a typical "star" memoir. It is as if you've picked up someone's diary to discover that a real person wrote it, and not a Hollywood "name." The honesty of her sentimentality makes you want to belive that there is still hope and possibility of comfort in today's world; her quiet truthfulness resonates our common longing to fit in and find internal peace while the world around us seems to be turning upside down.

For fans and non-fans alike, it is well written and gives evidence that the author is not just a pretty face, but has internal beauty that is far more fetching.

Sela Ward has delivered what is certain to be a classic for any southern woman who has ever left the roots of her raising to plant herself in distant soil, only to discover that a southerner can never emotionally detach from the people and the land that she calls "home." The South and her upbringing will continue to sustain her existence and renew her spirit. From the perfectly chosen title of the book to the prose perfect opening chapter, this book is nothing short of charming, gracious, earnest, heartfelt and lyrically written. Writers always carry with them a heartful of lines they wish that they had created and for me, one of those lines will be from the first page of "Homesick" --- "...a gentle town in the Deep South cradled by family and friends, worshiping Bear Bryant on Saturday night and Jesus Christ on Sunday morning..." That line, of course, speaks to the two great religions of the South, one, of course, being college football. Even more than the words of this book, I love the heart of it. Ms. Ward writes longingly and appreciatively of a gentle culture where graciousness and kindness are the cornerstones of a neighborly existence, a culture where casseroles and sweet tea reign supreme. This is a memoir of the most moving kind, the story of a young girl who followed her dreams but left a big piece of her heart behind in the land of her upbringing. It is uplifting to see a Hollywood star who never "got above her raising" and remains loyal to those and to that which she loves. Her mama, who passed away shortly before the book's release, would surely be proud of the woman she raised and the words she has written.

I admit that we share the same publishing company so I was fortunate enough to snag an early copy but I am so touched by this beautiful book that it will be THE book that I buy for Christmas gifts --- but only for the special ones who can really understand what a special gift it is.

This book is truely amazing. I cannot express all of my feelings towards it. To flip through the pages of Homesick and read of all of Sela's discoveries, embarkments, and life alterments was none other than exciting. I had known "of" Sela from "Once and Again" and from some of her movies but this book showed me more. It is probably hard to really describe one's life in a book, including describing one's own life, but Sela tackled the task and completed it. It's a book that no one, who is a fan of Sela, could skip reading, let alone put down for a second, while reading. I never stopped. True essence at heart.