genre: biography/autobiographyAnnie was born in 1915. She spent her entire life in farm country of North Carolina and this book is a collection of stories and thoughts that were told to her daughter, Margaret.
Was Annie's life exemplary in any sort of huge and radical way? Not particularly. Her life was incredibly hard, getting married during the depression, farming and working her fingers to the bone so she could put food on the table for her children. But she did these things with faith and with a sure knowledge that with hard work, anything could be worked out. I actually really enjoyed reading about what life was like back then and how things changed and modernized.
The thing is, this book was self-published so it wasn't really edited, which can be very distracting. Spelling and punctuation errors are all over the place, but if you know that going into it, you can just let it go. What this book is, besides just being a treasure to her family members, is an account of a life. A life like Annie's can't happen anymore - we've come so far from her feed-sack dresses and cotton-filled mattresses. But I love that this life is recorded so we don't forget how far we've come and how we can be grateful for all the things we do have. Especially since my husband's grandmother grew up under very similar circumstances in a very similar place, I appreciated learning more about the Depression/War Years in a real way.
I'd love to read a book like this about my own grandmother's or mother's life. It makes me want to write one.
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