American Elegy: A Family Memoir (General)

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American Elegy is an unforgettable portrait of America, a way of life, and a family that are vanishing even while coming to life on these exquisitely written pages. The author is the final descendent of pioneers who braved death to settle a dangerous frontier; they went as far west as they were able, and settled in a Western Pennsylvania town whose name reflected their high hopes and noble ideas: Parnassus.

Jeffrey Simpson found his story among the objects, and oral histories left behind by his forebears, and he uses these to tell his tale: 200 years of letters, diaries, farm receipts, snapshots, clippings, and more, weaving back through the strands of memory these objects carry with them, so that an ankle bracelet belonging to an elderly cousin becomes the starting point of a tale of rebellious passion, social prejudice, and lifelong regret. A pair of broken spectacles takes us on a journey to a farmhouse built on the remains of a pioneer cabin. We witness the rise and fall of a town that seemed to its inhabitants as eternal as their righteous moral code and values, yet proved to be as mortal as those who built it. It is a work that is both tribute and elegy--"Two hundred years ago they had come there," Simpson writes, "because it was as far as they could go. And now they had gone as far as they could."