When you drive through the pretty town of Hope And Glory, Ohio, you might dream of leaving city life and moving here.
Then someone mentions that it has the only French-speaking jail in the U.S.A., where the inmates have rifle practice every Tuesday, (Rifle Tots are Wednesday) and God speaks to people from the supermarket’s fresh vegetable aisle. A body has just been fished out of a septic tank: jumped or pushed? And the men in town – yes, they really do wear crocheted bags over their beards… ‘I guess I won’t move, ‘ you say. ‘I’ll just read about it.’
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A propos de l’auteur
Eileen Kane is the author of eight academic books and computer tools, many of them in the area of applied anthropology. She has also been a consultant to most of the major international development agencies, and focuses on getting more girls into primary and secondary schools
in developing countries, particularly in Africa. She says:
‘I grew up in the area of northeastern Ohio that’s the inspiration for the fictional little town of Hope And Glory. After reading the book my sister said, ‘I saw my whole life flash in front of me.’ What a tribute! The fire station wedding, the dog pound stories, the Schnauzer trims, the horse problem and others are hers. Randy’s ‘Rodney Romdey’s Weird Roamer’ belonged to a brother. Leland was modelled on my father, and ‘Chicken Shit’ was a beloved uncle. I appear, myself, from time to time: I always have a bed rope. In other words, the book wrote itself. My mother doesn’t figure much because she was a major character in my book Trickster: An Anthropological Memoir, about the Paiute Indians
of Nevada, despite not being a Paiute.
‘Roughly a quarter of the characters are fictional, such as Mickey and Susie; as are many situations: for example, the French-speaking jail,
the B.I.B. Campaign and the hologram furniture. I do hope these ideas will be adopted in a nice town, somewhere.
‘Over the generations, I, and many members of my family, worked for the late, badly missed Youngstown Vindicator, which closed in 2019 after 150 years. It shared little with The Hope And Glory Vindicator except a fondness for the word ‘yeggs’ and the mysterious headline, ‘Man Found Dead of Bullets in Cell.’
‘I live and work in Ireland, but not in an attempt to escape my relatives.’