A View from the Heartland; Everyday Life in America

by David Chartrand

• ISBN13: 9780762727322
• ISBN10: 0762727322
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2003-09-01
• Publisher: Globe Pequot

Summary

Many a lucky newspaper has on its staff a columnist with a gift for portraying everyday life -- observations that make us smile, cry, and reflect on our place in our community and our country; essays that assume an honored place on the family refrigerator or make their way into an envelope to be sent to friends and loved ones. The stories of award-winning newspaper columnist David Chartrand land on American refrigerators because he writes about such universal themes as love, work, community, family, aging, forgiveness, and death. Essays run the gamut from coaching a youth basketball team to living through the death of a sibling to the region's preoccupation with weather -- all perceived with honesty and humor. As the publisher of theThomasville(NC)Timesput it, "David Chartrand writes about things that real people talk about over the dining room table." A View From the Heartlandis a scrapbook of everyday life as viewed through the lens of the Midwest. This is not just a regional title, however. Chartrand's lens may be pointed at this swath of the country's heart, but through it we glimpse the extraordinary character and resilience of ordinary people who work, worship and raise families all across America.

Author Biography

Author David Chartrand is an award-winning journalist whose essays appear in newspapers and magazines across the United States. His writings are distributed by Universal Press Syndicate and can also be seen at www.davidchartrand.com.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction: You Can See Better from Down Here	p. ix
Everyday People	p. 1
Everyday Voices	p. 25
Everyday Trial, Everyday Error	p. 49
Everyday Tears	p. 85
Everyday Laughter	p. 117
In Every Family	p. 145
Postlude	p. 183
About the Author	p. 185
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

When families weep

American literature has reached the point where average, middle-class families have all but vanished. At least you never read about them anymore. Novelists and screenwriters seem incapable of depicting a family that doesn't include at least one alcoholic father who hates his job and batters his wife, one or two promiscuous daughters who hate their mother, one womanizing son who is stealing from his boss, or a borderline psychotic mother who is having an affair with a neighbor. I don't know many people like this but I imagine it would be interesting to spend the holidays with them.

Most of the families I know are less interesting and definitely less entertaining. They harvest crops, wait tables, teach high school biology and work in health clinics and law firms. They shovel snow, rake leaves, coach baseball, volunteer at church and spend their lunch breaks composing "to do" lists on napkins. Their garages are so crammed with bicycles and lawnmowers that they must park their cars on the driveway all winter. They don't speak in carefully constructed sentences because they have too many things to say and too little time to say them. Their favorite expressions are "yep" and "no problem." They do not rescue the world from terrorists or space aliens on a daily basis and most of them do not photograph well (the wind and humidity in the Midwest does terrible things to your hair). They expect strangers to speak courteously but are quick to forgive those who do not. They do not get huffy or impatient if someone steps in front of them in the checkout line. They were taught to believe that you never walk out on marriages or children, even bad ones. They work long hours and at day's end can barely summon the energy to drag themselves to the bedroom, whereupon they flop face-down on the pillow and thank God that nothing terrible happened to their children this day. If you catch them in a mathematical moment, they will tell you their lives are 90% family, 10% church and 100% unlike the families of popular literature. This latter estimate is a gross exaggeration.

The families of fact and the families of fiction have one thing in common: They all look the same when they cry....

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Excerpted from A View from the Heartland: Everyday Life in America by David Chartrand
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.