nomadreader

The backstory: Other Press has quickly become a publisher I look to and expect to like all of their titles. When I stopped by their booth at BEA, I knew I wanted to snag a copy of this novel, and I was thrilled when I got it. The basics: The Quickening is the story of Enidina and Mary, two women with little in common except geography. Both live on a farm and they live near one another in a unnamed Midwestern state in the early 1900's. My thoughts:  Michelle Hoover was born in Ames, Iowa, where my grandmother grew up and where I spent much of my childhood visiting my great-grandmother. She's the granddaughter of four longtime farming families. My roots may not run as deep in farming, but I'm proud to be a sixth-generation Kansan. The Midwest is in my blood, and it shapes my cultural identity. I trace my family to Kansas and Iowa, and enough generations have called those states home that I truly don't think of the countries those first immigrants came from. All of t...