“[A] vivid . . . quest for roots. . . . Splendid.”
—The New York Times Book Review
Growing up in the small river town of Moline, Illinois, Diane Johnson always dreamed of venturing off to see the world—and did. Now having traveled widely and lived part-time in Paris for many years, she is stung when a French friend teases her about Americans’ indifference to history. Could it be true? The j’accuse haunts Diane and inspires her to dig into her family’s past, working back from the Friday night football of her youth to the adventures illuminated in the letters and memoirs of her stalwart pioneer ancestors—beginning with a lonely young soldier who came to America from France in 1711.
As enchanting as her bestselling novels, Flyover Lives is a moving examination of identity and the “wispy but material” family ghosts who shape us. As Johnson pays tribute to her deep Midwestern roots, she captures the perpetual tug-of-war between the magnetic pull of home and our lust for escape and self-invention.
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From the Publisher
[A] vivid . . . quest for roots. Johnson strikes an elegiac note in her cullings of family and national history . . . splendid.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Smart and engaging . . . [A] singularly agreeable and appealing book.”
—The Washington Post
“Smart . . . perceptive . . . Flyover Lives is a memoir of the Midwest sure to charm readers.”
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR“Delightful . . . compelling and entertaining. . . . [Johnson's] storytelling brings [the] past vividly to life.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Lovely writing . . . [It’s an] absolute pleasure [to be] in the company of a skilled writer who so eloquently examines the people and geography that shaped her.”
—Boston Globe
“Johnson seeks to understand how [her family] history has shaped her character, and . . . her cheerful pragmatism and unsparing work ethic do seem tied to the can-do spirit of her ancestors.”
—The New Yorker
“Charming.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Adeptly structured, incisive, funny, and charming . . . Keenly observed.”
—Booklist
Library Journal
Johnson hardly has to whip out her writing credentials, having been a two-time finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in essay, biography, and fiction. Long a resident of France, she was surprised when a friend there said of Americans, "You don't really know where you're from." Inspired, Johnson dug up a rich lode of information about her intrepid pioneer ancestors in and around small-town Moline, IL—hence the "flyover" in the title. Many readers will identify, and more will enjoy.
Kirkus Reviews
2013-10-28
A European's challenge inspires a family history. Essayist, novelist and biographer Johnson (Lulu in Marrakech, 2008, etc.) became interested in her ancestors when a French friend remarked that Americans care so little about their pasts. Taking the criticism as a kind of dare, the author set out to unearth her origins in the Midwest, dismissively called "the Flyover." Growing up in Moline, Ill., in the 1940s, she admits, was uneventful. Her father was a school principal, her mother an art teacher; her extended family abounded in aunts, uncles and cousins. However, no one cared about the family's old-world roots. "We were Default Americans, plump, mild, and Protestant," writes Johnson, "people whose ancestors had come ashore God knew when and had lost interest in keeping track of the details…." Details, though, are what Johnson was after, and she found a treasure in a diary written in 1876 by her great-great-grandmother Catharine Perkins Martin. The diary, along with earlier letters and deeds, informs Johnson's narrative of her family's 18th- and 19th-century experiences. Catharine, newly married to a physician, settled in Illinois in 1826. Her life was hard; within five years, she had three daughters. In 1831, scarlet fever swept through the country, and within two weeks, all three were dead. Out of five more children, only one daughter survived; she married a man who fought in the Civil War. Johnson complements Catharine's memoir with her own recollections: summers at the family's cabin; afternoons at the movies; teachers' encouragement of her writing talent; a stint at Mademoiselle alongside Sylvia Plath, who "wore a merry face and a perfect pageboy bob"; marriages, motherhood, career. Some brief chapters seem like hastily recorded impressions, and a few are a bit shapeless. Nevertheless, Johnson, twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, is a felicitous writer, cheerfully alert to irony and absurdity. The unfailing deftness of the prose makes this book a pleasure.
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