ROCKBRIDGE

About the Book

The child of a small town in Midwest America tells of growing up in Rockbridge in the 1930s. Anecdotes recount childhood exploration, adventures, mishaps, and rebellion with friends, neighbors, and family. My piano teacher lives across the alley while down the alley “Betty Jean had a partially opened pack of Lucky Strike and we proceeded to light up.” Winter brings skating on creeks and sledding “until the orange ball of the sun slipped behind the cold watery sky.” Alongside these tales are refl ections by the child, revealing and honest. They contrast attitudes of the 1930s with childhood perception.

About the Author

Ann Allen grew up and was educated in southern Indiana, coming to England (London University) as a Fulbright scholar in the 1950s. Here Ann stayed teaching, p h o t o g r a p h i n g , and publishing books and articles on natural history. A trained botanist (PhD, Indiana University), Ann now lives in North Devon with a foot in London, but her roots remain in the heartland of America in southern Indiana. “I could not have written this unless I had grown up there and then lived away from there. With the passing of a way of life, this is a story that should be told.”