I was sent a free copy of Remember Whose Little Girl You are by Ellen Nichols by TLC Book Tours. All opinions are my own.
About Remember Whose Little Girl You Are:
“I was born in 1944, the second of four daughters. Our father was a Methodist preacher and our mother was a preacher’s daughter. My three sisters were each the epitome of what a preacher’s daughter ought to be: modest, caring, chaste, full of good deeds, discerning, and cautious.
It fell to me to uphold the popular image of a daughter of the parsonage: wild, willful, religiously disrespectful, incautious, and a trampler of tradition. And oh, I fell to this role with relish and abandon.”
Born the daughter of a preacher but afforded none of the grace or modesty, Ellen Nichols recounts her memories of growing up in the Deep South with relentless honesty and biting wit. Moving around Alabama from parsonage to parsonage, her family and the church are the two things that remain constant through her life.
Her father was never the average image of a southern Methodist preacher either, often preaching the importance of equal rights alongside gospel.
With every move, Ellen tells the stories of her new hometown and the people she meets there, from her childhood playmates to family friends to the many beaus (of varying quality) that she dated through high school. While the picture Ellen paints of the South during the fifties and sixties is transportive, it is not always idyllic.
The narrative of the Civil Rights movement is woven intrinsically throughout the chapters of the book, with racial tensions always looming in the background. Whether it is the local Dairy Queen where Ellen would order her food from the “Blacks only” window or the protest she attended against her college’s rules, her account allows for a look into a past that isn’t always acknowledged in today’s world.
There is a sometimes-jarring shock between Ellen’s humorous takes on the environment she grew up in and the grave seriousness of our nation’s sordid history. At times, Ellen’s memoir comes off as more of a tell-all, with her unabashed detailing of her life in the Deep South- both on a personal and broader level.
About the Author:
Ellen grew up in the American Deep South, but with a spirit of adventure, she went up to Toronto, Canada, to go to graduate school, and stayed 50 years.
No, she wasn’t a slow student, she just ended up getting married, raising a family, and building a successful career in charitable fundraising. She has been writing for a living for years, but was always writing for someone else.
Her grant proposals, direct marketing letters, and especially her thank you letters, are legend. Her persuasive writing skills raised millions of dollars.
Those Canadians loved her tales about her southern life so much, she decided to write them down and they became Remember Whose Little Girl You Are.
Recently, she moved back down south where she lives on Santa Rosa Sound near Pensacola. And yes, she is now writing all about her Canadian adventures.
“Remember Whose Little Girl You Are is the kind of enjoyably nostalgic book you’ll be eager to recommend to everyone you know.”
-Cassandra King, Best-Selling Author of The Sunday Wife
“I laughed, I cried, I was hooting and hollering. I was touched, I wished it was longer. I didn’t want it to end. . . . Ellen Nichols is helping pave the way for others of us who may want to share in the future but are fearful of judgment and all that comes with that . . .”
-Anne Tyler Harshbarger, Former Principal Ballerina with Atlanta Ballet,
My Opinion:
This is a memoir of a young woman growing up as a Preacher’s daughter in the South while the Civil Rights movement is just getting started. Ms. Nichols shares her life as she takes the reader along as her family moves from parsonage to parsonage.
As her family never stayed very long in any one place she never really develops long standing friendships as most of us doing during childhood. Instead it’s a serious of meet, make friends, and off on the road again. That lack of permanence leads to many an issue as she gets older.
Parts of the book are compelling but others are repetitive and overall it reads to me like a burst of short stories strung together without a binder. Especially the back end of the book.
Rating:
3
