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Pulling Down the Barn

Memories of a Rural Childhood: Great Lakes Books Series

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Pulling Down the Barn

By: Anne-Marie Oomen
Narrated by: Michelle Babb
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Summary

Pulling Down the Barn eloquently recalls author Anne-Marie Oomen's personal journey as she discovers herself an outsider on her family farm located in western Michigan's Oceana County, in the township of Elbridge - a couple hundred acres in the middle of rural America. Written as a series of heartfelt interlocking narratives, this collection of essays portrays the realities of farm life: haying, picking asparagus and cherries, the machinery of tractors and pickers; but each chapter also touches upon the more ethereal and rarely articulated: the stoic love that permeates a family, the farmer's struggle with identity, and the way land can shape a childhood. With its rich language and style, Pulling Down the Barn engrosses the listener in Oomen's memories - setting beauty and wonder against work and loss - and paints a poignant portrait of growing up in rural Michigan.

Winner of the Michigan Notable Book Awards. The book is published by Wayne State University Press.

©2004 Wayne State University Press (P)2015 Redwood Audiobooks Art & Literature Authors Essays Parenting & Families Relationships Rural School-Age Children Sociology Nonfiction Village Heartfelt Michigan

Critic Reviews

"Anne-Marie Oomen has written a perfect gem of a book: deceptively quiet, delicately structured, but with the enduring force, strength, and brilliance of a diamond." (A. Manette Ansay, author of Limbo and Vinegar Hill)
" Pulling Down the Barn is a vivid and magical work." (Barbara Hurd, author of Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark)
" Pulling Down the Barn is a wonderfully lyrical and evocative memoir." (Michael Steinberg, founding editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction and author of Still Pitching: A Memoir)
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