cover image This Stubborn Soil: A Frontier Boyhood

This Stubborn Soil: A Frontier Boyhood

William A. Owens. Lyons and Burford Publishers, $19.95 (312pp) ISBN 978-0-941130-19-6

Published 20 years ago and long out of print, this memoir is classic Americana that deserves renewed attention. It is a story of poverty and a family's struggle to stay together; of a youth's efforts to get an education. Pin Hook, in rural East Texas, was home to the Owens famiy. It was an isolated, unproductive farming community where everybody was dirt-poor and many were illiterate; where schooling took a back seat to working in the fields, and travel was by horse and wagon. The author came of age in the first quarter of this century, in a family of women who had lost most of their men; his only male relatives were brothers, an uncle and a cousin. This is a timeless portrait of growing up in America warm, funny, sadand when young William passes his college entrance examination, the reader is as elated as he is. (October 15)