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.
.
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).
.
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.
.
The Immigrant and the Outlaw is nonfiction done right. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable book!
—–
.
Her Whispers of a Southern Moon is an engaging collection of prose and free verse, of compelling characters and stories.
—–
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.