THE MIGHTY QUEENS OF FREEVILLE
A Mother, a Daughter, and the People Who Raised Them
by Amy Dickinson
In a gutsy debut memoir about family, resolve and the secret of survival, farm girl turned advice columnist Dickinson plows to the root of her down-to-earth American know-how.
The straight-shooting successor to Ann Landers, Dickinson’s previous claims to fame include the community auction of household possessions to square a debt accrued by her absent father, teaching Sunday school, harboring Holsteins and mastering single motherhood. In the late 1980s, Dickinson’s adulterous, soon-to-be-ex-husband walked out on her, and she recoiled to her banal hometown of Freeville, N.Y., with toddler daughter Emily. Dejected, fond of therapeutic cigarette smoking in the tub, she was steadily buttressed by patient pillars of female kin and finally traded the bathroom for a fresh start in Washington, D.C. Like a quarterback reacting to a testy defensive line, she called snap plays for first dates, odd jobs, solo parenting, disastrous home repairs and pet surgery. Hectic yet reflective, Dickinson’s mind constantly searched for life lessons in her mistakes while pondering how to present these aberrations as worldly insights to her daughter—a thought process which now endears 22 million readers daily to her column, “Ask Amy.” Real-life situations were forever testing her, from damage control after a high-school choir accident to the humiliating Laura Ingalls Wilder Halloween costume. Regardless, Dickinson’s crisis-filled playbook had two constants: candor and Freeville coaching. No fumble was without its rewards according to Freeville women, portrayed here as resilient blends of Marmee March and Calamity Jane.
An unabashed, self-pity-free, landmine-filled love letter to a rocky past, credited for the author’s current success and happiness.