Last Child on the Prairies

Most books of nostalgia are heroic in nature, but not very realistic. Not so with this book. The author does not see himself or the past through rose colored glasses. Everyone described is a real person, with good and bad qualities. Yet he sees them all, the farmers, the teachers and school friends, with compassion and understanding.
The time and place of this book is on a 1950s mid-western farm, in a decade rife with conflict and mixed emotions. It was a time overshadowed by two world wars and marred by the Cold War, which spread fear and propaganda across the globe like fallout from the hydrogen bomb. And yet children of that day played freely down by the creek and rode their bicycles along gravel roads to and from each other’s farms and villages. Parents had little to worry about, as far as their children were concerned.
This is the true story of Jim, a kind of Huckleberry Finn exploring nature all around him. The author fixes place and event through the eyes of a carefree and innocent child at a time of unease in the world. Feelings of sadness and loneliness are woven through a natural tapestry of earth, sky and stream, describing Jim’s relationships with his conflicted parents, his troubled sister, with the rough-hewn farmers, small-town merchants, teachers, good and bad, and of course, his pets and school friends.