VACUUMING IN THE NUDE

A writer who made it big in her 80s shares the view from behind the scenes.

Baltimore-based essayist Rowe tells the story of her hard-won writing success in her third book, which follows two bestsellers, the first of which her son helped her self-publish. That son, Mike Rowe, is the producer and host of the TV series Dirty Jobs, and the author describes the overlap between her career and his. “I figure that anyone who has inseminated a pig, combed hippopotamus poop from his hair, and bitten the testicles off a baby lamb in front of millions of people is fair game for his mother’s stories. His career has given us a glimpse into a world most people never see. We’ve joined him on episodes of Dirty Jobs and Somebody’s Gotta Do It as well as a half-dozen or so television commercials for Viva Paper Towels, Lee Jeans, Fel-Pro Gaskets, and various cleaning products.” The affection for outré humor must be in their DNA. The author shares a few amusing poems, an anecdote in which a cultured music teacher "toots" and calls it a “D-flat,” and an account of the time a medical procedure caused her husband’s scrotum to resemble an eggplant. Much of Rowe’s humor is of the old-school, Reader's Digest variety, and woven throughout the text is the heartwarming and inspiring story of someone who followed their bliss to success and wide recognition in their ninth decade. (As for the preceding decades, Rowe is unafraid to call out rejecters and critics.) Some of the author’s stories were previously published in the Baltimore Sun and elsewhere, and she has earned a huge audience, both for her published work and on social media, with “her hundreds of thousands of Little Facebook Friends.” She is doubtless ready to welcome new converts with her amazingly unending joy in storytelling.

A gentle, sweet book.