Flyover Lives: A Memoir

Award-winning novelist and essayist (L’Affair) Johnson explores her Midwestern roots and family history in this charming and candid memoir. Using letters written by her pioneer ancestors, the author delves into family stories while examining the lure she always felt to leave her comfortable home in Moline, Ill. “A pleasant place, surrounded by cornfields, I had always longed to get out of.” Johnson eventually got her wish, expanding her cultural horizons by living in California, London, and France. Johnson fills her chronological narrative with glimpses into the lives of her the 18th-century ancestors—lives filled with departures for the New World, religious revelations, and the painting, quilting, knitting, crocheting, and canning skills that preoccupied her female ancestor’s lives and were common activities for both her mother and aunts. Johnson’s tale tips into contemporary times with recollections of her family’s love for bucolic self-reliance, played out in their summer home; her Protestant upbringing; and her experiences in New York while a guest editor at Mademoiselle alongside Sylvia Plath. Johnson lightly touches on her two marriages and her writing career. An enjoyable peek into how America shaped one celebrated author’s consciousness. (Jan.)