Birkby's position as a well-educated woman who suddenly finds herself married and living on a farm makes her uniquely qualified for this type of writing. With great skill, she draws on both her roots growing up in small-town Iowa and her experiences as a young adult teaching and living in the city, to turn an inquiring eye to the homemaker's world. She is curious, observant of the details of life around her, and self-reflective about her own place in it all. Now in her 90s, her collected writings provide a treasure trove of the day-to-day mechanics of living in the Midwest over the past near-century. After reading this book I'm left wanting to read more of Birkby's work and that of her contemporary radio homemakers. I have a hunch that they were striving for the very thing that so many modern homemaker bloggers yearn for: simplicity, honesty, and true connection with those closest to them.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
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