Muriel's Memories

Book excerpt: As anyone who has spent time living on a working farm can attest to, it's a world you can't understand unless you live it. Imagine a rural farm in Tennessee at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century - no tractors, running water or plumbing. Farming was done with mules and horses; transportation by horse-drawn wagon. In the 1920s a young girl named Muriel Franks grows up on a family farm in Hardin County, Tennessee. These are the collected stories of that girl, who would grow up to graduate from a university at a time when women were a minority at college. In rich detail, Muriel tells us the stories of her life, her community, her family and friends, her neighbors her Methodist religion, her work, and some of the major developments that reshaped American society - from the Great Depression to the Second World War, continuing into the twenty-first century. From churning butter to making kraut, from church to the 4-H club, from building roads to making coffins, Muriel's Memories weaves a rich tapestry of history as written by someone intimate with the importance of historical accuracy.