Lillian

Growing up on a farm in the early 1900sLillian Eisenmann captured her memories of growing up on the border of Mississippi and Tennessee. Her unique style is full of insightful, humorous and tragic reflections of family life and catastrophic events that forced her family to move north at the beginning of the Great Depression.Lillian describes how her family survived limited resources by ingenuity, creativity, and strong religious faith. Her passion for food threads throughout the book,...
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Growing up on a farm in the early 1900sLillian Eisenmann captured her memories of growing up on the border of Mississippi and Tennessee. Her unique style is full of insightful, humorous and tragic reflections of family life and catastrophic events that forced her family to move north at the beginning of the Great Depression.Lillian describes how her family survived limited resources by ingenuity, creativity, and strong religious faith. Her passion for food threads throughout the book, inspired by her Grandma Judie, an exceptional cook, who lived on a Tennessee River pleasure boat in the late 1800s.Motivated by her mother's stories, Sylvia Eisenmann recently visited Mississippi and Tennessee to recapture Lillian's past. Lillian: A Southern Memoir is a compilation of Lillian's memories and Sylvia's search and discovery of this ordinary woman with an extraordinary life.Review by Beverly BurneySylvia has done what those of us who love and respect our parents almost never do'actually document the events, stories and memories of our parents' lives. Too often we listen to the tales about their early lives and don't have them record that information, so we can savor it, learn from it, and pass it on to our children. Sylvia's mother became a "second Mom" to me when Sylvia and I were in our teens. Reading about Lillian's childhood and youth in Mississippi was touching, fun and enlightening. I now know more about what made Lillian the woman I knew and loved.