Memoir Review: The Mighty Queens of Freeville

Book By Book

My last book group pick before a summer hiatus was The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town that Raised Them by Amy Dickinson, the famous advice columnist, Ask Amy. Everyone in my book group enjoyed this honest, funny memoir.

Despite her relative fame and public persona, Amy has written a very personal memoir. It’s about her family and her hometown, and her experiences going back there as a single mother after a devastating divorce. As she explains in the beginning of the memoir, hers is a family of mostly women (dubbed by her daughter as The Mighty Queens of Freeville), and many of them are/were divorced single mothers. She describes the divorce from her husband, which was a complete surprise to her, her long road through grief, and her process (erratic though it was) of figuring out what to do with her life. She brings us along as she heals, surrounded by her family, takes those first independent steps in moving to Washington, DC, and through her many experiences as a single mother. The memoir takes us right up to the present, with her daughter off at college and she herself cautiously dipping her toe back into a loving relationship.

It was well-written (of course), moving, and immersive. She’s very honest about how damaged she felt after the unexpected divorce and her struggle to get back on her feet and figure out what to do with her life. I also enjoyed that her hometown is in Upstate NY, not too far from where I grew up (though I grew up in a suburb of Rochester versus her rural town). Although I haven’t read her column before (our newspaper doesn’t carry it), I enjoyed her honest and funny writing, which was both heartwarming and hilarious. It was an enjoyable read, for me and for the rest of my book group.

225 pages, Hyperion 

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