Rate this book

We'll Be The Last Ones To Let You Down: Memoir Of A Gravedigger�s Daughter (2013)

by Rachael Hanel(Favorite Author)

3.72 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0816683468 (ISBN13: 9780816683468)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Univ Of Minnesota Press

review 1: A delightful journey into an unusual childhood and into a small rural Minnesota community where everyone knows everyone else. Rachel knew most everyone in town, but she wanted to know most everyone else – including those former inhabitants now residing in the town’s graveyard. One could say, she grew up in a graveyard having spent many childhood hours playing among the gravestones in Waseca’s small cemeteries where her mother and father worked preparing, digging, and maintaining the graves. While her childhood fascination for death made her presciently aware of her own ultimate demise, it also stimulated a voracious appetite for books about crime, death, the occult and the like unusual in a child her age. We watch Rachel mature, lose those she most loves,as she gener... moreously takes past insights to a new level of understanding. An insightful and intriguing book.
review 2: This book came to my attention because Rachael Hanel is a Minnesota journalist who (at least formerly) wrote for the Mankato Free Press, my hometown paper. Her memoir, about growing up as the daughter of a gravedigger in the small town of Waseca, about 30 miles east of Mankato, was touching, thought-provoking and often insightful. It was particularly interesting to me, as Waseca is also close to Janesville, where I spent a summer interning for the local (even smaller town!) paper. While I think Hanel leaves some questions about her family and its dynamics unexplored, she gave an interesting perspective--that of a child for whom death (and its surrounding issues) was both common and yet mysterious. Her own life changes forever--and her childhood essentially ends at age 15--when her father dies of cancer, and she makes it clear that her adulthood and life's pursuits may, indeed, have been different had he lived longer. If you like the memoir format, and have even a passing interest in rural Minnesota, I'd recommend this. less

Download links for: We'll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down: Memoir of a Gravedigger�s Daughter

Advertising