Customer Reviews

The House on Riddle Hill

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I am a librarian. In my library, I look over all the new acquisitions before they get shelved. Being around books all the time (and being in love with them) I have had to develop strong will-power to set aside interesting books, otherwise I'd never get my work done.

"The House on Riddle Hill" was powerful enough that even with my strong will-power, I was not able to set it down. There is something very honest about this book -- it is about real life, with all the seemingly simple happenings that have the ability to leave a mark in your heart. Here's a story that is a good example: Glenn got a few dollars to buy a pie at the country fair. He didn't have enough to buy the pies of the popular girls, but did get a mincemeat one (a kind he didn't like) from a girl who he hadn't thought of as pretty. But as they sat together and Glenn ate, she said to him so sincerely, "Thank you for buying my pie." They are simple stories, but they strike a heart chord.

I purchased my copy of the book at a book signing where I got to tell Mr. Tompkins how much I enjoyed it. He told me how at an earlier book signing, a woman came up surprised him by throwing her arms around him in a bear hug, and saying "After reading your book, I just feel like I know you!" I can understand this perfectly. "The House on Riddle Hill" is filled with love, so it just seems to bring it out in you.

This excellent book is every American's history. There is such an honesty without the trappings of sugar coated memories.

I am taken back to a time I will never experience. In my mind's eye I can visualize the commitment, struggle, joy and heartbreak of a family bound together in their effort to survive. Many aspects of this book reveal the hardships and pleasures of our elders' daily life that we cannot imagine on our own.

This book offers the gift of understanding that deepens our respect for where they have been and how they have come to be who they are.

I recommend it to all who want to understand the fabric and true grit of this country. What a wonderful resource for youngsters in school to read, it lends a greater appreciation for all we have and how we got to this point.

An amazing journey indeed!

Mr. Tompkins' book is a great read! It was even more special to me, though, because my Grandpa Tot was one of the "O'Neals on the next farm over". Their house is in the background of the photo on page 269. Some of the stories, like the one about the "Wild Man of Crowley's Ridge" I can remember from my childhood. Others, though, are a fresh glimpse into history. I drive by the Old Tompkins Farm every day on my way to work. Now, I can not help but to try to visualize what it was like when Mr. Tompkins was growing up, there in the house on Riddle Hill.

Glenn Tompkins wrote this book from his heart. He told stories of how hard it was to survive in the 1930's and 1940's on Crowley's Ridge in Southeast Missouri. The struggles of that time made the family unit strong there was work to be done and you did it. The family never gave up. After getting the book from Glenn's son and daughter in law I found I could not put it down. The first day I read 95 pages. The true stories make you laugh and then cry and I feel I know the Tompkins family personally. I would recommend this book to anyone and I plan to pass it on to my family members to read. Thanks to Glenn for a job well done.

Oddly enough this book sat on my shelf for over a year. I was inspired to give it a try after reading John Grisham' A Painted House during a recent vacation since it was based in the same era, local, and lifestyle as my father's childhood.

As a beneficiary of a couple of peach farmer generations, Mr. Tompkins has revealed what life was like before and after the peach bonanza in Campbell. I always felt that the peach orchard life was incredibly difficult. Now I realize that this hard life was an escape from the much more difficult life.

In The House on Riddle Hill, the author, Glenn Tompkins, recalls with nostalgia his early life, growing up on the hill farm his parents owned in southeastern Missouri. He remembers the difficulties of survival encountered by his family during the second quarter of the twentieth century, from the depression years until the economic boom of the post-World War II era. In his direct, sincere writing style, Mr. Tompkins relates his personal experiences and those of close family members, and his recollections of many of his neighbors and other community members. Unembellished by literary devices, the personal vignettes stand on their own basic merit and are heartfelt glimpses into the youth of the young man who grew up in The House on Riddle Hill.

A Reader From Fair Oaks. I highly recommend this book; It's a signature book for all the farm families of rural America before T.V. It gave a new meaning to life's struggles. It's a family book. I recommened this book for required reading in schools starting in the lower grades through college. The House on Riddle Hill is fun, positive, and educational.

In the 1930's and 1940's, a young boy named Glenn Tompkins and his family lived in a house on a farm north of Campbell, Mo., on a ridge called "Riddle Hill," so-named because a family named Riddle had once also lived there. Glenn and his family struggled to make ends meet, and lived a life quite similar to most of us farm kids who also lived on or off that ridgeline which is generally known as "Crowley's Ridge."

After Glenn retired, he began to think about writing about some of the events in his life, there on the farm. In 1994, Glenn started writing short stories about his life on Riddle Hill. Dr. Frank Nickell, Director of Regional History at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, read one of the stories and encouraged Glenn to continue recording the stories, for eventual publication as a book.

As Glenn wrote, around 130 of these short stories were published in a local Missouri weekly newspaper, the Campbell Citizen, from December 1994 until August 13, 1997. I was working part-time at the newspaper during that period (until February 1997), and it fell my duty to type most of those stories.

Now I should warn you that Glenn has the powerful capability to interject strong emotions into his writing, both humor and sadness. I am not ashamed to say that many times, as I was typing Glenn's stories, I had to laugh; and sometimes I had to cry, like when his old dog Queenie died, or his faithful horse Prince died -- and, certainly, when Glenn told about how a newfound friend was run over and killed by a truck on a road in front of Glenn's house, before Glenn had known the lad for even an hour.

Living on a farm in those days, we lived with life, as we saw baby calves born into the world. We also lived with death, as we slaughtered hogs and cattle to feed ourselves. That is just the way it was in those days, on a farm.

Well, over the years, Glenn recalled lots of things for us, like how hot it was to have to sleep in the attic of his house at night, during summertime. And he told us about the ghost that his brother thought lived up in the attic, too. And about the fortune-teller who told about the two pots of money which were supposed to be buried on the farm. The fortune-teller also told Glenn's father, Van, that they would be picking money off the trees on that farm. Glenn's father just laughed.

But when Van Tompkins stopped trying to raise cotton on that old red clay soil, and planted a peach orchard, they DID pick money from the trees, and the Tompkins family could live a little better from then on.

Well, I'd better not tell too much about Glenn's stories, but I will say that Glenn has not only created a great historical book which "tells it like it was" back in those days, but he has told the stories of hundreds of boys and girls whose families were just barely able to eke out a living on the little farms around here, in the 1920's through the 1940's.

The stories were published in a soft-cover 274-page book in May of 1997, and Glenn now keeps busy at book-signings, around the St. Louis area (where he lives) and elsewhere.

I am glad Glenn has written those stories, and I am proud to say that these two old farm boys have finally met up, and are now friends! -- Hal Miller

I found this book fascinating. The Depression Era in the Ozark foothills of Missouri is a slice of history mostly unremarked. The author's first hand accounts of this special time and place are very insightful. Anyone with an interest in Southeast Missouri history or history in general will not be disappointed!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book The House on Riddle Hill! It was a delightful book full of adventures of how life was then. It could be enjoyed by readers of all ages. It is an inspiration to people with a desire to become a published writer. I highly recommend it!