Customer Reviews

Prairie Reunion

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This book is not my usual genre, but thought I'd stretch a bit. A few chapters in, I felt that I should not be reading Barbara's private diary. Several chapters later I was wondering WHY I was reading Barbara's private diary. Several more chapters in, I was wondering why Barbara felt we all should be reading her private diary. I am confident that Barbara got more out of writing this book than I got out of reading it.

While I was aware that this was a memoir, my assumption was that something interesting must have happened to the author, or her immediate family, or her friends, or her neighbors, or her not so immediate family, or ANYONE! But that was not the case. While Barbara does a very good job of recalling various parts of her childhood, the reader is not really provided any reason to care about any of the characters. Unless you grew up in the Midwest, or were divorced once or twice, or had a parent die young or commit or attempt suicide, there was no real "hook," no connection to the author or her life. We don't really learn anything or take anything away from this book, nor do we learn that the author learned anything but a few missing facts about her past. We don't get any inkling of how that information and/or revelations will benefit her or the reader.

Despite her inclusion of geographic maps and genealogical family trees I had no idea who was related to whom, nor which generation was involved with which other generation. I'm sure it all made sense to her extended families, but to the moderately engaged reader it was very disjointed.

Though this volume was self-absorbed and narrow, Barbara's other volumes may be worth a read assuming that she has an actual story to tell in them.

In the mid-'40s, Barbara Scot's father abandoned his wife and two children and ran off with another woman, leaving behind a mortgaged farm and a pile of debts. He committed suicide in 1950, but his wife Katherine continued to live in the small Iowa town and to attend the Presbyterian Church that was witness to her shame. Years later, Scot returns to the town, to her grandfather's house, and to the farm that her mother defended, to try to understand the truth. What compelled her mother to remain? What compelled her father to flee? What combination of church and land loyalty and family heritage created this singularly American tragedy?

As she answers these poignant questions, Scot also movingly discovers a real father: her uncle Jim, who kept her safe and taught her to love nature and the world. Scot's story reminds us that the truth is never simple, and that we are all woven into an intricate web that stretches back into time and deep into community and culture. If you're looking for a book to help you understand a father's abandonment, a mother's determination, and the power of place, this story offers some important insights.

by Susan Wittig Albert
for Story Circle Book Reviews
www.storycirclebookreviews.org
reviewing books by, for, and about women

i thoroughly enjoyed this book. i am not an expert critic, but i found myself wanting to go"home" again after reading her book. very nostalgic and bittersweet.

Good content for the Middle West. My book club will read for January 08.