Pulling Down the Barn eloquently recalls author Anne-Marie Oomen's personal journey as she discovers herself an outsider on her family farm located in western Michigan's Oceana County, in the township of Elbridge-a couple hundred acres in the middle of rural America. Written as a series of heartfelt interlocking narratives, this collection of essays portrays the realities of farm life: haying, picking asparagus and cherries, the machinery of tractors and pickers; but each chapter also touches upon the more ethereal and rarely articulated: the stoic love that permeates a family, the farmer's...
Pulling Down the Barn eloquently recalls author Anne-Marie Oomen's personal journey as she discovers herself an outsider on her family farm located in...
Anne-Marie Oomen uses a wealth of vivid language and personal details to bring scenes from her childhood on a family farm to life in House of Fields. Yet the focus of this book shifts away from the daily activities of the farm, which Oomen presented in Pulling Down the Barn, to life outside its boundaries, as she explores the complex meaning of "education" in all of its rural forms. From reading lessons to shattered windows, from dynamite to first kisses, from lost underwear to confirmation names, these stories depict the spiritual and emotional journey of being educated by family, fields,...
Anne-Marie Oomen uses a wealth of vivid language and personal details to bring scenes from her childhood on a family farm to life in House of Field...
Coding and decoding are the themes of Anne-Marie Oomen's collection of poems, which together tell the story of a woman named Bead and her search for a safe harbor. The maritime International Code of Signals becomes a symbolic guide to Bead's journey, lending weightier meaning to boating phrases such as "You should proceed with caution" and "I am continuing to search." The beautiful terrain near Lake Michigan forms a powerful backdrop to the exploration of the life of a woman and her Native American lover, whose poverty and desperation are in stark contrast to the wealthy resort...
Coding and decoding are the themes of Anne-Marie Oomen's collection of poems, which together tell the story of a woman named Bead and her search for a...
In An American Map, Anne-Marie Oomen, award-winning writer and self-confessed northern Michigan homebody, chronicles her recent travels across America, in essays that span rediscovered landscapes, wild back roads, vital cities, and everything in between. Oomen takes both a wide and narrow lens to her destinations, giving readers a vivid sense of each locale while finding resonances between each place and her own experiences. With each new adventure, Oomen finds her sense of self deepening and becoming more clearly rooted in the larger adventure of America.
The evocative essays of An...
In An American Map, Anne-Marie Oomen, award-winning writer and self-confessed northern Michigan homebody, chronicles her recent travels across Amer...
As the 1960s dawned in small-town Michigan, Anne-Marie Oomen was a naive farm girl whose mother was determined to keep her out of trouble-by keeping her in 4-H. In "Love, Sex, and 4-H, " Oomen sets the wholesomeness of her domestic lessons in 4-H club from 1959 to 1969 against the political and sexual revolution of the time. Between sewing her first dish towel and finishing the yellow dress she wears to senior prom, Oomen brings readers along as she falls in and out of love, wins her first prize, learns to kiss, survives her first heartbreak, and makes almost all of her clothes.
"Love,...
As the 1960s dawned in small-town Michigan, Anne-Marie Oomen was a naive farm girl whose mother was determined to keep her out of trouble-by keepin...
The Lake Michigan Mermaid is a new tale that feels familiar. The breeze off the lake, the sand underfoot, the supreme sadness of being young and not in control-these sensations come rushing back page-by-page, bringing to life an ancient myth of coming of age in a troubled world. Freed from the minds of Linda Nemec Foster and Anne-Marie Oomen, the Lake Michigan mermaid serves as a voice of reason for when we're caught in the riptide.
This is a gripping tale in poems of a young girl's desperate search for guidance in a world turned upside down by family and economic upheaval....
The Lake Michigan Mermaid is a new tale that feels familiar. The breeze off the lake, the sand underfoot, the supreme sadness of being young...
