Review: FARM GIRL by Karen Jones Gowen

What a fresh approach for recording family history! Karen Jones Gowen brings a foreign era to an accessible format via folklore—telling her mother’s story of growing up in rural Nebraska in the Dust Bowl days in the personal first person point of view. In fact, she does this so well that I first took the moronic view that her book should be a standard for genealogists to tell their family’s histories in this fantastic format. But I then realized Gowen must have worked extremely hard and possess incredible talent to present this story in such a simple and appealing format. Not just anybody could do this. It reads simply, accessibly. The world might know history better if we had mass clonings of Karen Jones Gowen to tell all our family histories!

I was shocked to nearly feel that the story was a horror film! Snakes, rodents, and possums terrorized the characters and cow brains, pig hearts and livers filled their bellies. The protagonist was so awesomely tough that she clubbed an angry opossum on the head—as a kid. Her mother slaughtered seventeen rodents with a hand shovel!

Lest I put Farm Girl in an unfairly brutal light, I must also mention the beauty of the story. This is a true story of strong farmers who lived off their own land and worked together in a community where honesty and goodness were the norm. But again, I must say I enjoyed this story very much and nearly felt I was reading Fantasy, the setting and circumstances were so foreign. And the numerous authentic photos were the absolute cream.