The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them

Millions of Americans know and love Amy Dickinson from reading her syndicated advice column "Ask Amy" and from hearing her wit and wisdom weekly on National Public Radio. Amy's audience loves her for her honesty, her small-town values, and the fact that her motto is "I make the mistakes so you don't have to." In The Mighty Queens of Freeville, Amy Dickinson shares those mistakes and her remarkable story. This is the tale of Amy and her daughter and the people who helped raise them after Amy found herself a reluctant single parent.

Though divorce runs through her family like an aggressive chromosome, the women in her life taught her what family is about. They helped her to pick up the pieces when her life fell apart and to reassemble them into something new. It is a story of frequent failures and surprising successes, as Amy starts and loses careers, bumbles through blind dates and adult education classes, travels across the country with her daughter and their giant tabby cat, and tries to come to terms with the family's aptitude for "dorkitude."

They have lived in London, D.C., and Chicago, but all roads lead them back to Amy's hometown of Freeville (pop. 458), a tiny village where Amy’s family has tilled and cultivated the land, tended chickens and Holsteins, and built houses and backyard sheds for more than 200 years. Most important, though, her family members all still live within a ten-house radius of each other. With kindness and razor-sharp wit, they welcome Amy and her daughter back weekend after weekend, summer after summer, offering a moving testament to the many women who have led small lives of great consequence in a tiny place.

"'I didn't become an advice columnist on purpose,' writes Dickinson (author of the syndicated column 'Ask Amy') in her chapter titled 'Failing Up.' In the summertime of 2002, after spending months living off of her credit cards between freelance writing jobs, Dickinson sent in an audition column to the Chicago Tribune and became the paper's replacement for the late Ann Landers. Here, Dickinson traces her own personal history, as well as the history of her mother's family whose members make up the 'Mighty Queens' of Freeville, N.Y., the small town where Dickinson was raised, and where she raised her own daughter between stints in London; New York City; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago. Dickinson writes with an honesty that is at once folksy and intelligent, and brings to life all of the struggles of raising a child (Dickinson was a single mother) and the challenges and rewards of having a supportive extended family. 'I'm surrounded by people who are not impressed with me,' Dickinson humorously laments. 'They don't care that my syndicated column has twenty-two million readers.' Dickinson's irresistible memoir reads like a letter from an upbeat best friend." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Amy Dickinson took over Ann Landers' syndicated advice column in 2003. In "The Mighty Queens of Freeville," she comes across very much as you'd expect an advice columnist to do: smart, humorous, commonsensical, not prone to deep self-analysis and — despite having lived in London and Chicago and worked in New York as a television producer — a passionate proponent of small-town American values.

... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Billed as a memoir, "The Mighty Queens" reads more like a collection of essays, something with which to pass the time while you're waiting at the airport. The book hits all the right contemporary women's-lit buttons, from the title, which immediately tells you you're in Sisters of the Traveling Pants territory, to the wry, bright writing style, to the cast of characters in Dickinson's family. They may suffer from an unusually high divorce rate, but they're terrific at sharing communal pancake breakfasts and being there for each other.

No one is described in much detail. Daughter Emily, no doubt well on her way to Mighty Queenhood herself, doesn't get a lot of ink. Nor does the affluent, spoiled husband whom Dickinson followed to London and eventually divorced, though you can't help finding him rather interesting. The narrative skims lightly over a lot that you'd like to hear more about: Dickinson's childhood "on a failed dairy farm in rural poverty of the ugly, muddy sort," for example. And the beloved cow, Shirley, who ended up in pieces in the freezer. There's probably a very good story somewhere beneath the swift, chatty surface of Dickinson's prose, and perhaps someday she'll tell it.

Reviewed by Juliet Wittman, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)

"The Mighty Queens of Freeville is great American storytelling at its best. A tale of promise postponed and scrappy survival, Amy Dickinson's glorious triumphs are like rabbits pulled out of a hat, one after another after another. Full of hope and humor and big simple truths, it is a story told with grace and without a trace of cynicism. This is a book you will love and one you will be truly sad to finish." Laura Zigman, author of Animal Husbandry

"Reading Amy's book in bed. Wife to me: 'Is it good?' Me to wife: 'Sure, but what do I care, I'm a guy?' Wife to me: 'Then why are you crying?'" Noah Adams, author of Piano Lessons

"In The Mighty Queens of Freeville, Amy Dickinson shares her life story about love and loss, parents, daughters, aunts, fathers, pets, and life from the mundane to the ridiculous to the quietly heartbreaking. Or, sometimes loudly heartbreaking, with great big honking sobs. Amy doesn't have all the answers, but she suggests a good place to find them: at home, with the people who love you." Peter Sagal, host of NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! and author of The Book of Vice: Naughty Things (and How to Do Them)

"Common sense, a practical nature, and a searing sense of social justice are the hallmarks of Amy Dickinson's advice column. Now, in a delicious and hilarious memoir, Amy gives us her worldview via Main Street with wit and originality, through her own bejeweled binoculars. The view is never, for a moment, self-indulgent. She's a wise and fair queen for sure. Long Live Amy!" Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of the Big Stone Gap series, Lucia, Lucia, and Very Valentine

"Buoyant and bright, Dickinson offers a refreshingly open and sincere tribute to life's most important relationships." Booklist

"An unabashed, self-pity-free, landmine-filled love letter to a rocky past, credited for the author's current success and happiness." Kirkus Reviews

"Mighty Queens could have easily descended into a dreadful woe-is-me tale. It never does. Dickinson's sense of humor...and her refusal to let anger take over her life are inspiring." Charlotte Observer

"Millions of readers of Amy Dickinson's column, 'Ask Amy'...invite her into their homes....Now Amy invites us into hers." South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Dickinson has made a career out of helping others, through her internationally syndicated advice column "Ask Amy." Readers love her for her honesty and for the fact that her motto is "I make the mistakes so you don't have to." Here, she shares those mistakes and her remarkable story.

"The Mighty Queens of Freeville is great American storytelling at its best. A tale of promise postponed and scrappy survival, Amy Dickinson's glorious triumphs are like rabbits pulled out of a hat, one after another after another. Full of hope and humor and big simple truths, it is a story told with grace and without a trace of cynicism. This is a book you will love and one you will be truly sad to finish."

--Laura Zigman, author of Animal Husbandry

"Reading Amy's book in bed. Wife to me: 'Is it good?' Me to wife: 'Sure, but what do I care, I'm a guy' Wife to me: 'Then why are you crying?'"

--Noah Adams, author of Piano Lessons,

"In The Mighty Queens of Freeville, Amy Dickinson shares her life story about love and loss, parents, daughters, aunts, fathers, pets, and life from the mundane to the ridiculous to the quietly heartbreaking. Or, sometimes loudly heartbreaking, with great big honking sobs. Amy doesn't have all the answers, but she suggests a good place to find them: at home, with the people who love you."

--Peter Sagal, host of NPR's "Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!" and author of The Book of Vice: Naughty Things (and How to Do Them)

"Common sense, a practical nature, and a searing sense of social justice are the hallmarks of Amy Dickinson's advice column. Now, in a delicious and hilarious memoir, Amy gives us her worldview via Main Street with wit and originality, through her own bejeweled binoculars. The view is never, for a moment, self-indulgent. She's a wise and fair queen for sure. Long Live Amy!"

--Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of the Big Stone Gap series, Lucia, Lucia, and Very Valentine

Millions of Americans know and love Amy Dickinson from reading her syndicated advice column "Ask Amy" and from hearing her wit and wisdom weekly on National Public Radio. Amy's audience loves her for her honesty, her small-town values, and the fact that her motto is "I make the mistakes so you don't have to." In The Mighty Queens of Freeville, Amy Dickinson shares those mistakes and her remarkable story. This is the tale of Amy and her daughter and the people who helped raise them after Amy found herself a reluctant single parent.

Though divorce runs through her family like an aggressive chromosome, the women in her life taught her what family is about. They helped her to pick up the pieces when her life fell apart and to reassemble them into something new. It is a story of frequent failures and surprising successes, as Amy starts and loses careers, bumbles through blind dates and adult education classes, travels across the country with her daughter and their giant tabby cat, and tries to come to terms with the family's aptitude for "dorkitude."

They have lived in London, D.C., and Chicago, but all roads lead them back to Amy's hometown of Freeville (pop. 458), a tiny village where Amy's family has tilled and cultivated the land, tended chickens and Holsteins, and built houses and backyard sheds for more than 200 years. Most important, though, her family members all still live within a ten-house radius of each other. With kindness and razor-sharp wit, they welcome Amy and her daughter back weekend after weekend, summer after summer, offering a moving testament to the many women who have led small lives of great consequence in a tiny place.

Amy Dickinson is the author of the syndicated advice column "Ask Amy," which appears in more than 150 news-papers nationwide. She is the host of a biweekly feature on NPR's Talk of the Nation and is a panelist on NPR's quiz show Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! She lives in Chicago and Freeville, New York.