The Ride Of Her Life

I love the nobility of the main character. The slices of life of the times in 1954 when she feels its never too late to live. Always on her own timetable, in her own admirable way. She was different then and ostracized for it. Hopefully it will become a movie because it has that feel like you’re seeing her adventure through her eyes, and are. Unfortunately times were supposedly different the way poor are treated, but she still would be looked down upon I think in today’s maddening caste system, maybe not as open but even  iconoclastic people are mostly treated with suspicion and less than. And that’s how they treated an elderly person, imagine how she was treated and with her so-called nickname you don’t have to imagine.

But that’s not the meaning of the book. It’s about uncanny strength. And her wonderful spirit. And like a really good book, you’ll never forget it.

Unconventional definitely and very poor but she didn’t lack was courage and knowing herself and caring two-bits what people thought, at least show it. She had a creative at a time when a female was expected to act a certain way. That attitude is at least dead today. I had never heard the phrase Letts used to describe that condition was “Cult of Domesticity. Brilliantly scary and accurate.

She had no time for that on the isolated farm being a caregiver: for her old uncle, the horses, barn, cats, fetching water, splitting firewood and 62. I would say not 10% of men or women could handle that a third her age. It was her life.

Until diagnosed.

And figured it was time to take a ride, babe! A  took a look at a world she didn’t know nor would we know America that mid-fifties world today. It doesn’t exist. Letts compassionately and honestly allows us to feel what that was like through her illusory and poetic style. It’s a book that keeps you enthralled in a with a coffee lounging around on the weekend and cold out when you don’t have journey in you. But wow, did she!