Great New Book on Country Living

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Great New Book on Farming and Country Living: Country-fied: Life in the Dakotas – by Elaine Babcock (Knuckledown Press).

I highly recommend this new publication reviewed here by Jamee Larson. It can be purchased from Smashwords at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/9996. This is not an ad. I actually commissioned Jamee to do this review because I want people to read the book. It’s cheap, and I think many of you will really enjoy it!

Elaine Babcock believes in living every moment to the fullest and appreciating the world around her. As a writer, her goal is to “paint word pictures of the way things used to be and the way I see things now.” Country-fied: Life in the Dakotas is a collection of essays that serves as a textual portfolio for those observations. Babcock takes readers on a journey from rummage sales and church potlucks, to funerals and hunting trips. Interspersed in between are essays that display her respect and admiration for the Dakotas. In “Living Country Style” she writes, “Sometimes when the weather was gentle that prairie called me. On the Dakota prairies I learned to listen to nature, to God, and to myself.” Her prose is full of rich sensory details that enable her to paint her word pictures.

Many of Babcock’s essays deal with personal issues, often written with a mix of raw emotional honesty and self-deprecating humor. Readers will appreciate her candor and relate to her life experiences. Part advice column, part personal essay, the variety of subjects contained within this collection has something for everyone. Babcock has managed to take the personal and make it universal, which is the very thing that makes this collection so relatable.