icequeen wrote: ↑January 13th, 2021, 8:42 pm
Praise received for
Sue Anderson (Sue Anderson) from our
'Thank a reader' feature:
A few years ago I listened to "The White Heart of Mojave" by Edna Brush Perkins, an author I never heard of. It was read by Sue Anderson.
Sue's voice and tempo were perfect. I can still hear it even though it's been several years. I loved the book though I'm not sure I would have loved it as much if I hadn't heard it through Sue's rendition. She and Perkins brought the beauty of the Mojave to life. I live in wet, green PA. I had no idea a desert could be so beautiful.
Thank you so much Sue, I'm eternally grateful to you.
Sincerely, Kay
All of Sue's recordings!
Hi Kay, Thank you for your kind words about The White Heart of Mojave, (written in 1922). It is one of my favorites too. As you know, Edna Perkins and the friend with whom she adventured into the Mojave desert were "middle-aged, mothers of families and deeply involved in the historic struggle for the vote [for women]. "It was," she writes "our habit to tell large and assorted audiences that freedom consists in casting a ballot at regular intervals and taking your rightful place in a great democracy; nor did it seem anomalous, as perhaps it should have, that our chiefest desire was to escape from every manifestation of democracy in the solitariness of some wild and lonely place...a different kind of freedom from that about which we had been preaching."
As an aside, I've never lived in the South West but I feel the pull of the clear skies and open spaces. Among our family stories was one my mother used to tell about her mother's sister (my great aunt) who ran a boarding house in Pecos, New Mexico. Many years ago, on a cross country trip, I detoured into Pecos, drove up to the ranger station at the Pecos National Historical Park, stopped to read a prominent warning sign about rattlesnakes, and then headed inside to ask at the front desk if anybody had ever heard of "Reuter's Mud Hut," the name of my great aunt's boarding house. Wow, was I in luck! The volunteer I spoke to not only had heard of the place, she had a key to the empty but still standing adobe structure, which locals were petitioning to have listed on the register of historic buildings. After showing me around, she asked if I wanted to see the Reuter's ranch! I had no idea of the existence of a "ranch." But it turned out my great aunt had homesteaded on the Pecos, abandoning what must have been a hardscrabble existence only during World War II. There was abandoned farm house on the property with canning jars still on the shelves. That incredible day spent in Pecos, New Mexico, was on my mind when I read "The White Heart of Mojave."