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

Dickinson, Amy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1594133956 ISBN 13: 9781594133954

Publisher: Large Print Press, 2010

Synopsis

A New York Times Bestseller, A Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, Doubleday Book Club, Literary Guild and the Lifestyle Club -- Five years ago, after an exhaustive search, the Chicago Tribune announced Amy Dickinson as the next Ann Landers. Readers love her for her brutal honesty, her small-town values, and the fact that her motto is: "I make the mistakes so you don't have to." Now Amy spins those mistakes into the remarkable story of the women in her family who helped Amy and her daughter after Amy's husband abruptly left them.

About this title

About the Author:

Amy Dickinson is a syndicated advice columnist. She replaced Ann Landers in 2003 and now pens the "Ask Amy" column, which appears in more than 100 newspapers nationwide, including the LA Times, The Chicago Tribune, Newsday, The Boston Herald, the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the Washington Post. She currently lives in Chicago.

From The Washington Post:

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Amy Dickinson took over Ann Landers's syndicated advice column in 2003. In "The Mighty Queens of Freeville," she comes across very much as you'd expect an advice columnist to: smart, humorous, common-sensical, 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. 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. -- Juliet Wittman
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Large Print Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1594133956
• ISBN 13: 9781594133954
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 273