The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio introduces Evelyn Ryan, an enterprising woman who kept poverty at bay with wit, poetry, and perfect prose during the "contest era" of the 1950s and 1960s. Evelyn's winning ways defied the church, her alcoholic husband, and antiquated views of housewives. To her, fl...
Kinda makes you wish they still had contests requiring skill, rather than the random drawings of modern sweepstakes. I'm pretty good with words. I probably coulda won me some cool stuff.
I read this while waiting on line to pick up The Deathly Hallows. It's a quick read. It functions well as a snapshot of life for a housewife in the fifties, with interesting information about the contesting craze. Although it addresses the difficulties caused by the dad's alcoholism and ensuing p...
I found this book about the author's mother to be interesting but flawed. I think she could have used a strict editor. I am just old enough to remember the tail end of the big contests for housewives, and it was fun to find out more about them. I found this book to have too many details about things...
Log in with Facebook 
