I am Tracy Million Simmons, owner of Meadowlark Press. As a small regional press specializing in stories from the Midwest, I’d like to take this moment to introduce you to a Meadowlark book. One of my all-time favorites is Gravedigger’s Daughter: Vignettes from a Small Kansas Town, by Cheryl Unruh. You may recognize Cheryl’s name as the author of the award-winning books of essays Flyover People: Life on the Ground in a Rectangular State and Waiting on the Sky.
In Gravedigger’s Daughter, Unruh has written a memoir in short sketches that stand alone, almost as photographs, yet together tell a deeper story of a relationship. The casual reader might pick up this book and see poetry, but with each turn of the page, the story of a life is told, the complexity of a relationship unfolds. In fact, Gravedigger’s Daughter received both the Martin Kansas History Book Award and the Nelson Poetry Book Award by the Kansas Authors Club in 2022. These honors highlight the achievement of the author in crafting this collection.
Ron Parks, the history book judge, wrote that Gravedigger’s Daughter, “is an insightful, generous-spirited book that creates a vivid sense of both place and time by telling the story of growing up in Pawnee Rock, a small town in Barton County during the 1960s and 70s. Unruh’s relationship with her father, an unassuming yet extraordinary man, is affectionately and unsentimentally rendered. The author’s understanding of the character of her father and hometown is delineated by an original writing style that is lean, colloquial, and understated while at the same time detailed, colorful, and intense; the language is both plain-spoken and elegant.”
The poetry book judge, Julia Galm, had this to say about the book: “Gravedigger’s Daughter stands as a testament to how great writing uses particulars to capture the universal.
While few readers may have helped to prepare graves as a child or know what the summer sky looks like from their depths, Unruh’s beautifully crafted reflections unearth the relatable joys and confusions of youth, love, and loss. While each poem preserves a carefully honed memory, the collection as a whole carries the reader through a lifetime with touching humor and heartbreaking grace. It is an intimate look into a specific family, but it stirs familiar emotions that have the magic to conjure readers’ own pasts.”
The book starts with a memory, the author as a child in the house her father built, a gentle father folding too-big socks to fit little feet into Mary Janes. We get to know this father through a maturing lens, until we find ourselves sitting at his hospital bedside with the author, wondering if this is where his story ends. Readers will be prompted to recall their own childhoods and the complexities of lives intertwined, the stories of loved ones so familiar to us that we carry them with us, even long past their time with us.
I recommend this book for the beauty of the writing and for the pauses it will encourage you to take. It is a book that will prompt reflection and remembering. It is full of lovely stories, and the love between a father and a daughter that you will carry with you, as well.
I am Tracy Million Simmons for the High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club’s Summer Reading List.