Turning Bones

by Lee Martin

Book Overview

Farmers and pragmatists, hardworking people who made their way west from Kentucky through Ohio and Indiana to settle at last in southern Illinois, Lee Martin's ancestors left no diaries or journals or letters; apart from the birth certificates and gravestones that marked their comings and goings, they left little written record of their lives. So when Lee, the last living Martin, inherited his great-grandfather's eighty acres and needed to know what...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803232314
• ISBN13: 9780803232310
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 194 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

An American Life

In "From Our House," Lee Martin explored his youth, growing up with a father who must cope with a split-second decision that cost him both of his arms. In "Turning Bones," with the help of his ancestors, Martin explores his middle age, looking back on his marriage, the question of children, the death of a friend. Reconstructing the lives of his forebears from what facts he can discern and the skin and bones that he inherited, Martin not so much stalks his ancestors as he is stalked and guided by them; they tease him with their shadows so that he finally has "the peace of his confession." The beautiful concluding chapter confirms, in more ways than one, that his inquiry was worth the trip.