The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Story of Surprising Second Chances - Softcover

Dickinson, Amy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1401310125 ISBN 13: 9781401310127

Publisher: Hachette Books, 2010

Synopsis

This beloved New York Times bestselling memoir from "Ask Amy" is a warm and moving true story of second chances in a tiny upstate New York town.
Dear Amy,
First my husband told me he didn't love me. Then he said he didn't think he had ever really loved me. Then he left me with a baby to raise by myself. Amy, I don't want to be a single mother. I told myself I'd never be divorced. And now here I am--exactly where I didn't want to be!
My daughter and I live in London. We don't really have any friends here. What should we do?Desperate

Dear Desperate,
I have an idea.
Take your baby, get on a plane, and move back to your dinky hometown in upstate New York -- the place you couldn't wait to leave when you were young. Live with your sister in the back bedroom of her tiny bungalow. Cry for five weeks. Nestle in with your quirky family of hometown women -- many of them single, like you. Drink lots of coffee and ask them what to do. Do your best to listen to their advice but don't necessarily follow it.
Start to work in Washington, D.C. Start to date. Make friends. Fail up. Develop a career as a job doula. Teach nursery school and Sunday School.

Watch your daughter grow. When she's a teenager, just when you're both getting comfortable, uproot her and move to Chicago to take a job writing a nationally syndicated advice column.
Do your best to replace a legend. Date some more.

Love fiercely. Laugh with abandon. Grab your second chance -- and your third, and your fourth.

Send your daughter to college. Cry for five more weeks.
Move back again to your dinky hometown and the women who helped raise you.

Find love, finally.
And take care.
Amy

About this title

About the Author:

Amy Dickinson is a syndicated advice columnist. She replaced Ann Landers in 2003 and now pens the "Ask Amy" column, which appears in more than 100 newspapers nationwide, including the LA Times, The Chicago Tribune, Newsday, The Boston Herald, the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the Washington Post. She currently lives in Chicago.

From The Washington Post:

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Amy Dickinson took over Ann Landers's syndicated advice column in 2003. In "The Mighty Queens of Freeville," she comes across very much as you'd expect an advice columnist to: smart, humorous, common-sensical, not prone to deep self-analysis and -- despite having lived in London and Chicago and worked in New York as a television producer -- a passionate proponent of small-town American values. Billed as a memoir, "The Mighty Queens" reads more like a collection of essays, something with which to pass the time while you're waiting at the airport. The book hits all the right contemporary women's-lit buttons, from the title, which immediately tells you you're in Sisters of the Traveling Pants territory, to the wry, bright writing style, to the cast of characters in Dickinson's family. They may suffer from an unusually high divorce rate, but they're terrific at sharing communal pancake breakfasts and being there for each other. No one is described in much detail. Daughter Emily, no doubt well on her way to Mighty Queenhood herself, doesn't get a lot of ink. Nor does the affluent, spoiled husband whom Dickinson followed to London and eventually divorced, though you can't help finding him rather interesting. The narrative skims lightly over a lot that you'd like to hear more about: Dickinson's childhood "on a failed dairy farm in rural poverty of the ugly, muddy sort," for example. And the beloved cow, Shirley, who ended up in pieces in the freezer. There's probably a very good story somewhere beneath the swift, chatty surface of Dickinson's prose, and perhaps someday she'll tell it. -- Juliet Wittman
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hachette Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1401310125
• ISBN 13: 9781401310127
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240