A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton

Once in a while when I'm browsing the library I check out the book that the book club is reading for the month and this is one of them.  They are usually very well written and are usually bestsellers.  This particular book is also a member of Oprah's Book Club.

Alice Goodwin has a good life in Prairie Center, a small town in Wisconsin.  A handsome husband, two beautiful little girls, 400 acres of farm land with a springfed pond, a great old house, and a barn complete with milk cows.  She works as school nurse at the town's elementary school.  Her neighbor, Theresa, is her best friend and the two often swap babysitting duties. One day while Alice is babysitting her friends two girls, she decides to take the girls for a swim in the pond. She goes upstairs to change into her swimsuit, during which time Theresa's little 2 year old, Lizzie,  rushes out to the pond and drowns.  The community mourns, Alice is in shambles, the relationship between the two friends obviously dwindles. 

Meanwhile, another child, a six year old boy at the school with severe emotional problems, who Alice sees often as nurse, and has given her quite a hard time has told his mother as well as authorities that Alice has sexually molested him.  She is arrested and taken to jail where she spends three months.  Her bail is set at about $100,000.00 and her husband eventually sells the farm to get her out.  The family moves to the city to await trial.

The trial date arrives and still grieving over the drowned girl, hurt from a fight in jail, struggling with her relationship with her husband and her best friend, Alice must testify. 

An awesome page turner.  Powerful, unforgettable, daring, compelling, gripping, and exquisite.  When I first began reading the book, I didn't have a clue what it was going to be about because there wasn't a summary on the back or on the inside jacket cover.  Since it was a book club book I decided to give a try anyway and I'm glad that I did.  The first few pages are a little slow describing the family and the farm life and I thought it was going to be boring, but believe me, it definitely picked up very soon.  Bravo, Jane Hamilton!

Kids Section: Great Books for Kids

Dirt Boy by Erik Jon Slangerup.  A boy named Fister Farnello is always getting dirty.  To avoid having to take a bath he runs away and makes friends with Dirt Man, a very dirty giant.  Fister gets so dirty that he has mice and birds living in his hair, mushrooms growing between his toes, and moss growing in his bellybutton.  After days of frolicking in the dirt with Dirt Man, and even the birds and mice are complaining of the smell coming off of Fister, he decides he'd better go home.  At first his mother doesn't recognize him, and thinking him a monster, sprays him with the hose.  Thats when she realizes the monster is her long lost son and takes him straight to the bathtub. "It took twenty-three bars of soap, sixteen bottles of shampoo, one hundred and seventy-nine gallons of bathwater, forty-four million bubbles, and eleven tubes of toothpaste to finally get Fister Farnello clean."  And so the moral of the story is that it is ok to be clean.  This book is primarily written for children in grades k-3.  Heck, who'm I kidding?  I loved it! 

Other Books my kids have loved:

Where the Wild Things Are, A little boy in a wolf suit causes some mischief and is sent to his room without supper and he imagines that his room grows vines and turns into a forest where he meets some Wild Things.

Miss Spiders Tea Party, A lonely spider who eats only flowers makes friends with bugs.

Mama Do You Love Me, A little Inuit girl conjures up all kinds of reasons why her mother might not love her, but of course her mother still loves her even when shes angry or upset. 

 

Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? THE CARTER FAMILY

Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? THE CARTER FAMILY & Their Legacy in American Music by Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg

After reading CASH, The Autobiography(See December 2003 Journal Entry)and learning about the Carters through him, I had to have more.  Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone is the first major biography of the Carter Family and their legacy as musical pioneers.  Their musical style became the basis for what is country, folk, and bluegrass music today.  A.P. Carter was a poor, eccentric mountain farmer from Poor Valley, Maces Springs, Virginia in the foothills of Clinch Mountain.  He married Sara Dougherty, who was the cousin to the late famous Mother Maybelle Carter.  Maybelle was the wife of A.P.'s cousin Eck Carter.  A.P., Sara, and Maybelle started out playing for friends and neighbors in the early 1920's.  Soon A.P. would travel about the mountain area collecting songs and writing songs of his own.  In 1927, the three went to Tennessee to audition for a New York recording executive who was paying fifty dollars for any song recorded.  Two of country music's first stars were produced from those sessions:  Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family.

By the 30s, the Carter Family was selling more than a million records and was appearing regularly on XERA, a high-powered radio station broadcasting from coast to coast.  People all over the country would gather around their radios listening to this music that told their life stories. 

Here is the story of the Carter family as they were.  Their trials and tribulations.  Their down home lives, their sadnesses, the great scandal and divorce of Sara and A.P.  The story of how A.P. died a lonely man on a mountain with a lot of land but very little recognition of what he had accomplished.  The story of Sara's true love Coy Bays and how she ran off to live with him in California and left her children behind with A.P. in Virginia.  The story of Maybelle, the sweet, talented, mother who eventually made her daughters, June, Helen, and Anita famous and traveled with the Johnny Cash show.  Maybelle was idolized by many, many musicians and her guitar picking style is still copied today. 

Now, I have been listening to the old Carter Music.  My husband can't stand it, he comes in a asks if we can listen to something else.  I, on the other hand, get the chills from listening to Maybelle on guitar or autoharp, Sara's country voice, the songs from our past, or A.P.'s deep bass voice chiming in from time to time.  Even if you don't like country music, you should read this book.  It has a lot of history, American history and I learned a lot.  Thanks Mark and Charles.  You have researched, recorded and written an awesome story of a family that will live on in America's heart forever. 

To hear samples of the music please visit:  http://www.un-broken.net/music/