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(More customer reviews)This review is a long time coming. I read the book over a year ago and I was incredibly and pleasantly surprised by it.
But first a disclaimer: The author, Larry Jacobsen, is my father in law.
But let me clarify that our relationship in no way affects my opinion on the book. If anything, as it is unfortunately the case with relatives' work, whom we can never quite appreciate as we do strangers, I approached reading this book with a negative bias.
I opened the book with my mind already made that it was going to be a somewhat boring read, an indulgence of a man nearing the end of his life journey and that it was not probably going to be the greatest literary experience of my life.
I was wrong. Dead wrong.
While the writing style is indeed a bit folksy and a little less polished than a NY Times reader might expect, it is more than adequate and easy to read. In fact, as all good writing should do, it quickly fades away in favor of the story itself.
The book starts a bit slowly. We are treated to farming life in an era that seems as far away as the Punic wars. Not a fast paced subject under any circumstance.
But once past the first few pages we are treated to a completely engaging account of this man life story and the cast of characters that have accompanied him throughout his life journey.
The countryside, the towns and life in the mines take on a quality and texture that reminded me at times of folk art paintings, with their bold colors and strong lines. At other times it was more like reading a watercolor landscape. One where the quiet countryside was populated by burly men in stained overalls and faces black from soot.
In this book, which is labeled as an autobiography, Larry eventually almost fades from the story and becomes an observer of his surroundings and the people populating them. That's when the book reaches its best part and we get to know and experience life in small mining towns.
And characters they are: one after the other they pass through, all in search of a better life and all, unbelievably, trying to find it in a deep dark hole in the ground. But as we descend in the bowels of the earth with these men (I don't believe there were many women miners at the time) we get to know them and appreciate them better, until we almost start to understand their fascination with their job.
Beside meeting all these incredibly sculpted characters, including Larry himself, one of the most enjoyable topics in the book is the mining technology Larry describes so vividly. If you are a mining buff, this book is for you. If you aren't, there is plenty more to engage even the most disinterested of readers.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Leaning into the Wind: Memoirs of an Immigrant Prairie farm Boy
This is a humorous story about an awkward runt - a misfit growing up on a farm on the western prairies during a time of few radios and no electricity or plumbing. It's an account of a boy ina large poverty-stricken family coming of age and making his way into the workforce. The book has scores of photos and gives the reader vivid insights into farm life during the nineteen thirties and forties. The reader will also experience life in the rugged logging, mining and construction camps.Here you will meet some of the extraordinary characters the author toiled and drank with - a special breed of men who not only worked hard, but played hard too. Underground mining was dangerous, but more of these men were killed at the wheels of their cars, than in the mines. The author also tried sales - first vacuum cleaners door to door and later real estate. By the age of forty the author had used up nine lives, as well as having other narrow scrapes. At age forty-four he entered graduate school for an MBA despite only a Grade X education and later launched a rewarding consulting career.
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