MAUD AND PEARL

Andree presents a personal memoir and an exploration of family history.

The author was born the youngest of nine children in 1927. Her parents, Maud and Zeke, had spent the first years of their marriage on a homestead in Oklahoma. Prairie life was not easy; laundry was boiled in a large tub over a fire. Maud lacked a clothesline, so she left wet laundry on waist-high grass to dry. The author looks at the lives of her siblings, including her brother Ira, who was killed in an oil derrick accident, and her brother Leo, who managed to join the U.S. Navy at the age of 14. Andree also recounts her own experiences: She entered high school in 1939 in Tolleson, Arizona, where various farm boys were interested in dating her, but, as she puts it, “wild horses couldn’t have dragged me to the altar to marry a farmer.” She instead married a pilot named Jimmy Goggin. The author, like her mother, made her own wedding dress. The marriage to Jimmy involved frequent moving and a tragedy in 1955. Later chapters explore further developments, like another marriage and a move to Australia. To say the work is meticulous would be an understatement—myriad fine details are woven into the text, such as the fact that, due to Jimmy’s allergies, when he worked around sawdust he had to “lie down on the floor for about two hours when he got home.” It’s easy to get lost in the names and lives of so many family members, but the author maintains a folksy, simple tone that makes for pleasant reading. The reader learns about everything from an attempt to subdue a rattlesnake with bug spray (“which only made it quite angry”) to how Andree tried to coax her mother into buying Ovaltine by explaining that she “wouldn’t cry so much” if she did. Occasional recollections from others and family photos help to fill out an extensive, well-rounded narrative that captures more than a few memorable moments.

A dense but highly enjoyable account of an American life.