by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
Bantam Books / Random House, Inc.
Memoir / Midwest regional history
Hardcover, $22.00, illustrated with family photos
ISBN-13 978-0-553-80495-9, ISBN-10 0-553-80495-2
Trade paperback, $12.00, illustrated with family photos
ISBN-13 978-0-553-38424-6
MBA Bookseller Information
LITTLE HEATHENS was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year for 2007 by The New York Times Book Review
Mildred Armstrong Kalish lives in CA, but the book is about her childhood in rural Benton County, Iowa. Mildred Kalish is included on Bantam Dell’s “Author Chat” list. All the details are on the web page. The author can be contacted through this page and will be happy to speak to groups by telephone.
Please note: MIDWEST CONNECTIONS rebates are not available for the paperback reprint of this 2007 MC Pick.
Downloads
- Full-Color Midwest Connections Sign (PDF)
- Full-Color Sign (PDF)
- Full-Color Poster – Family photos* (PDF)
- Recipe Cards* (PDF)
- Store and Community Event Ideas (PDF)
- Book photo (JPG)
- Midwest Connections Generic Display Materials
*Can be re-used for the paperback
About the Book
“Kalish has kept her memories tidily ordered for decades. Now she has unpacked and worked them into a story that is not only trustworthy and useful (have I mentioned the recipe for homemade marshmallows?) but is also polished by real, rare happiness. It is a very good book, indeed.”
– Elizabeth Gilbert, The New York Times Book Review“I have always loved to listen to people’s stories of growing up in a different time and place than mine. My grandparents and many of my bookstore customers have shared wonderful tales of growing up during the Depression in the Midwest. It is no surprise that I find LITTLE HEATHENS a charming collection of memories. Winters with her siblings under the strict guidance of their grandparents and summers on the farm with their single mother provide Mildred Kalish with a unique trove of information about a history many of us have in common. It’s like sitting out on the back porch eating pie listening to stories your relatives are sharing. Readable comfort food!”
- Lisa Baudoin, Books & Company, Oconomowoc, WI“This lovely book, so unaffected and so generous, opens the door to a past I knew as a child in Iowa, and I wept with joy and recognition as I read it. It deserves a distinguished place next to Hamlin Garland’s Son of the Middle Border but, with its deep humility, it would also fit, without a single word of protest, next to the Betty Crocker Cookbook.”
- Ted Kooser, U. S. poet laureate, 2004-2006
LITTLE HEATHENS is a luminous memoir filled with tenderness and humor that recalls the author’s childhood and the fifteen years she spent on her grandparents’ Iowa farm during the depths of the Great Depression. As bleak as life was during this era, Mildred Armstrong Kalish recounts these years with joy and gratitude.
Highlighted with more than 20 recipes and how-tos for everything from catching and skinning a rabbit to preparing homemade cosmetics or apple sauce cake, LITTLE HEATHENS portrays a world of hardship and hard work tempered by simple rewards. It is an intimate and vivid chronicle of a particular time and place – a slice of American life that truly evokes the virtues that the author and her family came to rely on in order to survive: resourcefulness, perseverance, courage, and loyalty.
Mildred Armstrong Kalish grew up in rural Benton County, Iowa, in the small town of Garrison and on a nearby family farm. Her extended family – grandparents, mother, brothers and sisters, “old maid” aunts, uncles, cousins – all lived there, too, since the time that her great-great grandparents settled in the county around 1846. Her Yankee ancestors were among the earliest pioneers in the area.
