Diane Johnson

Flyover Lives: a Memoir Diane Johnson

Publisher Marketing: Growing up in the small river town of Moline, Illinois, Diane Johnson always dreamed of floating down the Mississippi River and venturing off to see the world. Years later, at home in France, a French friend teases her about her Americanness: " Indifference to history. That s why Americans seem so naive. " The j accuse stays with Johnson. Are Americans indifferent to history? Her own family seemed always to have been in the Midwest. Surely they had gotten there from somewhere? In digging around, she discovers letters and memoirs written by generations of her stalwart pioneer ancestors that testify to more complex and fascinating times than the derisive nickname the Flyover gives the region credit for. This is the story of the people who struggled to reach places like Ohio, Iowa, and Illinois two hundred years ago and saw no reason to leave. Johnson weaves in passages from these cherished records, illuminating the westward journeys shared by so many American families and the bedrock character that enabled them to survive a brutal pioneer period to become the sheltered guardians of Americana in both its best and worst incarnations. With the acuity and sympathy that her bestselling novels are known for, Johnson captures the magnetic pull of home against our lust for escape and self-invention. Here is the small-town charm of a midwestern childhood as well as the series of adventures that led to her unlikely situation in France, so far from Moline yet, as her history reveals, the birthplace of her first ancestor to brave the New World. A dazzling meditation on the mysteries of the wispy but material family ghosts who shape us, this spellbinding memoir is also a keenly insightful exploration of how we shape ourselves." Review Citations: Audio File Best Nonf & Culture 12/01/2014 pg. 24 (EAN 9781480575561, Compact Disc) Contributor Bio:  Johnson, Diane Diane Johnson is an American-born novelist and essayist. Twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and nominated three times for the National Book Award in three different genres ? essay, biography, and fiction ? she is the author of a dozen novels, including Le Divorce, Le Mariage, and L?Affaire. Here she returns to the mode of her classic biography, Lesser Lives. A frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, she splits her time between San Francisco and Paris. Contributor Bio:  Toren, Suzanne Suzanne Toren has over 30 years of experience in recording. She won the American Foundation for the Blind's Scourby Award for Narrator of the Year in 1988, and "AudioFile" magazine named her the 2009 Best Voice in Nonfiction & Culture. She is also the recipient of multiple Earphones Awards. Her many credits include works by Jane Smiley, Margaret Weis, Jerry Spinelli, Barbara Kingsolver, and Cynthia Rylant. "AudioFile "also raves, "Toren brings a distinguishing warmth and power to her narrations. Her talents extend to both fiction and nonfiction, and in her recording career of 30-plus years she has given listeners heart-wrenching memoirs, lively history, engaging light fiction, and involving mysteries." Toren also performs on and off-Broadway and in regional theatres.