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Love, Sex, and 4-H

By: Anne-Marie Oomen
Narrated by: Jan Grimshaw
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Publisher's Summary

As the 1960s dawned in small-town Michigan, Anne-Marie Oomen was a naive farm girl whose mother was determined to keep her out of trouble - by keeping her in 4-H. In Love, Sex, and 4-H, Oomen sets the wholesomeness of her domestic lessons in 4-H club from 1959 to 1969 against the political and sexual revolution of the time. Between sewing her first dish towel and finishing the yellow dress she wears to senior prom, Oomen brings listeners along as she falls in and out of love, wins her first prize, learns to kiss, survives her first heartbreak, and makes almost all of her clothes.

But even as she wins her first modeling competition and masters more difficult stitches and patterns, Oomen's orderly life will be complicated by her first kiss, first boyfriend, first store-bought dress, and finally, first love. All the while, she must negotiate her mother's expectations, her identity as a good 4-H girl, and her awareness of growing social and political unrest.

The book is published by Wayne State University Press.

©2015 Wayne State University Press (P)2015 Redwood Audiobooks
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

Critic Reviews

"Love, Sex, and 4H is a significant contribution to literature about the Midwest...Other rural memoirs abound, but few cover life in the upper Midwest, and those that do never focus on the social and sexual awakening of a rural girl with dreams of grandness and a life of purpose and passion." (Mardi Jo Link, author of Bootstrapper: From Broke to Badass on a Northern Michigan Farm)
"This beautifully observed and wrought book is full of the details of handmade objects and physical labor - a way of life that seems more inaccessible all the time, as our culture daily becomes more virtual." (Amy Hoffman, author of several memoirs, including Lies About My Family)
"Anne-Marie Oomen's memoir is exquisitely written... Love, Sex, and 4H is destined to become a classic of Midwest rural literature. (Peter Makin, Brilliant Books)

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