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Good Roots: Writers Reflect on Growing Up in Ohio
Good Roots Writers Reflect on Growing Up in Ohio Author:Lisa Watts (Editor) “A good place to be from.” That’s how some people might characterize the Buckeye State. The writings in Good Roots: Writers Reflect on Growing Up in Ohio, are testimony to the truth of that statement. — By prominent writers such as P. J. O’Rourke, Susan Orlean, and Alix Kates Shulman, these contributions are alter... more »nately nostalgic, irreverent, and sincere, and offer us a personal sense of place. Their childhoods are as varied as their work. Some were raised in urban Cleveland, Akron, and Cincinnati, others in the small Ohio towns that typify the Midwest, and still others in the countryside. Yet what they have to tell us about their roots resonates with a shared heritage, a sense of what is universal and enduring about growing up in the heartland.
Their collective resume reads like a literary Who’s Who, including four Pulitzer Prizes, several National Book Awards, and many prestigious fellowships. Good Roots is also plain good reading from some of our country’s most accomplished contemporary writers.
Foreword : goofy Ohio stories and other sweet things / R.L. Stine --
Introduction : looking for roots / Lisa Watts --
Fathers in the snow, and other selected poems / Jill Bialosky --
Sweet Lorain / Michael Dirda --
Grace notes / Rita Dove --
Pool buddy / Susan Orlean --
Why it's good to come from nowhere / P.J. O'Rourke --
The known to which I return / Alix Kates Shulman --
Preacher's kid / Dan Cryer --
Out of Ohio / Ian Frazier --
Two towns, arguing / Dale Keiger --
This is the place / Julie Salamon --
Heroes and tree huts / James Toedtman --
Decoction / Mark Winegardner --
In such a homecoming / Elizabeth Dodd --
We are mapmakers / Anthony Doerr --
The mere breath of sheep / Andrea Louie --
Geese and crows / Kathleen Dean Moore --
Answers / Mary Oliver --
After the flood / Scott Russell Sanders --
Salamanders and sycamores : a natural history / Jeffery Smith --
Afterword : toward a literature of the Midwest / Mark Winegardner« less