Echoes of a Life in Fieldale

I met Margaret Adkins, the oldest member of the Piedmont Writers, when I attended their March 14 meeting. We chatted briefly and swapped books. She had to leave early because she doesn’t drive after dark, so we didn’t get to talk as much as I would have liked.

Recently I finished her memoir, Echoes, a delightful book—and a good example of the type book that’s suitable for self-publishing. (She used XLibris, a print-on-demand publisher). Adkins lived her entire 85 years in Fieldale, Virginia, a little town an hour’s drive south of where I live.

On her book’s website, she tells why she wrote:

This book is about my life from the age of two years onward. I wrote this book so that those that come after me understand what life was like growing up in a family of seven children with a perfect stay-at-home mother and a father who was a stranger to his children. The Depression years and living in a small mill town affected our lives until the 1940s. Our struggles and rewards were about equal. I hope that those who read my stories can, at some point, identify with the characters and events and laugh or cry as the story affects them.

I did. Reading Echoes, I felt as if I was sitting on Adkin’s front porch and having a nice chat with her.

I was impressed and inspired how she took up traveling late in life—and how much zest for life she has. She has accomplished her purpose—readers can indeed understand what life was like in a big family in Fieldale in the 30s and 40s.

And, after reading her book, I’ll never look at bowling or Bingo quite the same way again.

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