![]() ![]() ![]() And as a joint biography it was interesting, if a little self-important. ![]() Only the last 15 pages or so seem to authentically come from her own recollections and pertain to her own experiences as she experienced them, as opposed to her "experiences" in the sense that, yes, she was there on that same farm at the same time as these happenings. So what was it? Kind of a joint biography of her parents, using source materials like her mom's journals and interviews with people that stayed on the farms in those years, and also her memories. ![]() Was 4 year old Melissa really meditating on the fact that tree roots spread below her in a near-mirror image to the branches above her while she lay in the woods? Was her first reaction to a snail shell really the miracle that the curve of the spiral was exactly like a fiddlehead fern? I mean, these are clearly the musings of a later Melissa Coleman, and normally that'd be fine, but the way that the book was framed kept pulling me out to shake my head at the central conceit: that this is an actual memoir. Writing about how her mom's pupils contracted the first time she saw her dad? Recounting the Nearing's reactions to finding out that her mom was pregnant? And even later, when she actually existed in the timeline, it really didn't ring true. It affected the fiction of being from Melissa's POV throughout, but that was a very awkward fit for most of the book. Firstly, I would hesitate to even call this a memoir. ![]()
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