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More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depressionby Mildred Armstrong Kalish
Staff Pick
Those of us who feel like we're "just getting by" will be both humbled and inspired by Kalish's tales of life on an Iowa farm during the Great Depression. Her humorous and heart-warming depiction of a childhood spent working the land and, in doing so, unearthing life's simple pleasures during one of the bleakest periods in our nation's history, serves as a reminder that the best things in life are often free. Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:I tell of a time, a place, and a way of life long gone. For many years I have had the urge to describe that treasure trove, lest it vanish forever. So, partly in response to the basic human instinct to share feelings and experiences, and partly for the sheer joy and excitement of it all, I report on my early life. It was quite a romp. So begins Mildred Kalish's story of growing up on her grandparents' Iowa farm during the depths of the Great Depression. With her father banished from the household for mysterious transgressions, five-year-old Mildred and her family could easily have been overwhelmed by the challenge of simply trying to survive. This, however, is not a tale of suffering. Kalish counts herself among the lucky of that era. She had caring grandparents who possessed — and valiantly tried to impose — all the pioneer virtues of their forebears, teachers who inspired and befriended her, and a barnyard full of animals ready to be tamed and loved. She and her siblings and their cousins from the farm across the way played as hard as they worked, running barefoot through the fields, as free and wild as they dared. Filled with recipes and how-tos for everything from catching and skinning a rabbit to preparing homemade skin and hair beautifiers, apple cream pie, and the world's best head cheese (start by scrubbing the head of the pig until it is pink and clean), Little Heathens portrays a world of hardship and hard work tempered by simple rewards. There was the unsurpassed flavor of tender new dandelion greens harvested as soon as the snow melted; the taste of crystal clear marble-sized balls of honey robbed from a bumblebee nest; the sweet smell from the body of a lamb sleeping on sun-warmed grass; and the magical quality of oat shocking under the light of a full harvest moon. Little Heathens offers a loving but realistic portrait of a "hearty-handshake Methodist" family that gave its members a remarkable legacy of kinship, kindness, and remembered pleasures. Recounted in a luminous narrative filled with tenderness and humor, Kalish's memoir of her childhood shows how the right stuff can make even the bleakest of times seem like "quite a romp." Review:"Kalish's memoir of her Iowa childhood, set against the backdrop of the Depression, captures a vanished way of traditional living and a specific moment in American history in a story both illuminating and memorable. Kalish lived with her siblings, mother and grandparents-seven in all-both in a town home and, in warmer weather, out on a farm. The lifestyle was frugal in the extreme: 'The only things my grandparents spent money on were tea, coffee, sugar, salt, white flour, cloth and kerosene.' But in spite of the austere conditions, Kalish's memories are mostly happy ones: keeping the farm and home going, caring for animals, cooking elaborate multi-course meals and washing the large family's laundry once a week, by hand. Here, too, are stories of gossiping in the kitchen, digging a hole to China with the 'Big Kids' and making head cheese at butchering time. Kalish skillfully rises above bitterness and sentiment, giving her memoir a clear-eyed narrative voice that puts to fine use a lifetime of careful observation: 'Observing the abundance of life around us was just so naturally a part of our days on the farm that it became a habit.' Simple, detailed and honest, this is a refreshing and informative read for anyone interested in the struggles of average Americans in the thick of the Great Depression." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"Full of country wisdom, home remedies and recipes for delicacies like wilted lettuce salad and apple cream pie....A delightful read." San Jose Mercury News Review:"Little Heathens is an enchanting but thoroughly unsentimental look at rural life in the Great Depression. In clear clean prose we are offered the grit, struggle, and also the joy of hard work on a farm. I cherish this book for its quite naked honesty and quiet lyricism about a time which makes our current problems nearly childish. This is a fine book." Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall Review:"Now that cell phones are a way of life, you won't find a better way to participate in the Good Old Days. Whether you are of farm origins or not, Little Heathens is a bit of history begging to be borrowed. Like a neighborly cup of sugar, it will sweeten your modern-day life." MaryJane Butters, author of MaryJane's Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook for the Farmgirl In All Of Us Review:"Using this book alone, one could reconstruct, with glorious exactness, a lost time and place. Mildred Kalish has a novelist's eye for detail and a beautiful understanding of what the gestures of daily life mean. A lovely, wise, transporting memoir." Joan Silber, author of Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories Review:"Not only trustworthy and useful, but also polished by real, rare happiness. It is a very good book, indeed. In fact, it's a very very very good book." New York Times Book Review Review:"Unpretentious yet deeply intelligent...[Little Heathens] radiates the joy of a vanished way of life....In prose that never yields to mawkish sentimentality, Kalish details the roles of family, religion, thrift, and education in her upbringing." Booklist About the AuthorMildred Kalish is a retired professor of English who grew up in Garrison, Iowa, and taught at several colleges, including the University of Iowa, Adelphi University, and Suffolk Community College. She now lives with her husband in northern California. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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