Priscilla Bettis recommended and rated The Immigrant and the Outlaw five stars!
This is a collection of Joy Neal Kidney’s micro-memoirs and mini-biographies of generations of her family and those who surround(ed) them.
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Kidney is an accomplished freelance writer, so these pieces are tightly written and polished. Any tears that I shed (and I did cry a few times) weren’t from sappy shallow stories but palpable, real-life, gritty and loving experiences. I enjoyed her descriptions of farming life, ways of living during the Depression, and life during the mid-20th century. I enjoyed her admiration for our military veterans (that and her work with Bosnian immigrants are what made me cry, and the quilt story, too; I shed tears over the quilt).
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Kidney is a sky watcher and no doubt qualifies as an “amateur astronomer.” I learned things about comets that I wouldn’t have even known to ask. And she loves rainy days, which had me yearning for a nice drizzle. There’s a nostalgic vibe running through the pieces, a result of her own memories and those of her family … crank telephones (“our ring was four shorts”), treadle sewing machines, a cob-burning stove, and barns when they were active and sturdy.
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The Immigrant and the Outlaw is nonfiction done right. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable book!
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Priscilla Bettis is an avid reader and a joyful writer. This generous reviewer lives in small-town Texas with her two-legged and four-legged family members. She is a member of the Christian fiction book-review team at The Well Read Fish. A former secular horror author, Priscilla now writes Christian stories and poetry inspired by her awe of God and love for fellow human beings..
Her Whispers of a Southern Moon is an engaging collection of prose and free verse, of compelling characters and stories.
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The Immigrant and the Outlaw: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland is available in paperback, hardbound, ebook, and audiobook through Amazon.com and Amazon.uk.
Congratulations, Joy, on the lovely review. Priscilla is also an accomplished writer.
Thank you, Robbie. She certainly is, and so thoughtful as well.
Bettis did an exceptional review not only of “The Immigrant and the Outlaw,” but also of you as an author. Congratulations, Joy! 🙂
Thank you, Nancy. I recently got acquainted with her when someone reviewed her new book. Her testimony at the end of is enlightening, as her energies turn to themes about God from writing horror stories for so long. It was a delightful surprise that she was one of the first to review my new one.