An Appalachian Boy's Life

A Walk In Three Centuries

Non-Fiction - Autobiography
314 Pages
Reviewed on 03/14/2018
Buy on Amazon

This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Free Book Program, which is open to all readers and is completely free. The author will provide you with a free copy of their book in exchange for an honest review. You and the author will discuss what sites you will post your review to and what kind of copy of the book you would like to receive (eBook, PDF, Word, paperback, etc.). To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email.

This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Review Exchange Program, which is open to all authors and is completely free. Simply put, you agree to provide an honest review an author's book in exchange for the author doing the same for you. What sites your reviews are posted on (B&N, Amazon, etc.) and whether you send digital (eBook, PDF, Word, etc.) or hard copies of your books to each other for review is up to you. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email, and be sure to describe your book or include a link to your Readers' Favorite review page or Amazon page.

This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Donation Program, which was created to help nonprofit and charitable organizations (schools, libraries, convalescent homes, soldier donation programs, etc.) by providing them with free books and to help authors garner more exposure for their work. This author is willing to donate free copies of their book in exchange for reviews (if circumstances allow) and the knowledge that their book is being read and enjoyed. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email. Be sure to tell the author who you are, what organization you are with, how many books you need, how they will be used, and the number of reviews, if any, you would be able to provide.

    Book Review

Reviewed by Joel R. Dennstedt for Readers' Favorite

In a memoir as important to human history and understanding as it is to the specific locale’s true representation of human spirit, Flem R. Messer’s plain-spoken but deeply meaningful book, An Appalachian Boy’s Life, relates the tale of a time and place when self-sustainability was a practice, not a goal; when family responsibility and support were extended into something called neighborliness, not confined and hoarded selfishly; and when gratitude for the simplest generosities and gifts was profoundly felt by both children and adults. Mr. Messer’s recollections of this incredibly human time and place are told so matter-of-factly and with such straightforward candor and lack of guile that one finds oneself nostalgic for a past they never knew. Not for the hardships, perhaps, nor for the endemic episodes of violence, though they also created the neighborliness, gratitude, and generosity, but definitely for the enduring sense of family love and mutual cooperation they engendered. Mr. Messer is speaking of his childhood home: Appalachia.

Well known for its often-desperate conditions of general poverty, Appalachia is less familiar for the strongly independent quality of its enduring people. In a quiet but persistently authentic voice, Flem R. Messer’s compelling tale of An Appalachian Boy’s Life does much to silence the ignorance of strangers while restating the source of humanity’s original greatness: an overriding devotion to family and community based on survival and self-sustaining independence. Mr. Messer’s later efforts to further the area’s educational and financial concerns are also well documented. This masterfully revealing book rightfully deserves a significant place among our national historical archives as well as serving as a sociological resource for understanding any dramatic cultural change.