7
May
2009
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised Ten Kids on 25 Words or Less by Terry Ryan
Teryy Ryan passed away two years ago from brain cancer. She spent her life as a technical writer and poet, though as far as I am aware, she never published her poetry. But man did she hit it big with her one and only book, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio. I mean, a movie starring Julianne Moore an Woodey Harrelson? That’s a pretty good note to go out on.
Ironically, Ryan wrote the book to cope with her grief after losing her mother to cancer in 1998.
She found a trunk with contest entries of her mother’s and that kicked off her idea for the book.
Evelyn Ryan was a contester. Not a contender, like Rocky, but contester, as in someone who enters contests.
Back before all you had to do was take an online survey to be entered into sweepstakes, companies asked people to do a little work for prizes like new refrigerators and savings bonds. Usually the entrant had to write a jingle for the product in 25 words or less (hence the subtitle). Beats paying copywriters, huh?
This is all well and good and probably would make for a boring book if not for three facts:
- Evelyn Ryan bore ten children on her husband Kelly’s blue collar wages
- Kelly Ryan was an alcoholic
- Evelyn had an uncanny habit of winning right in the nick of time to be able to pay the mortgage and feed her family
And Terry Ryan writes with great love and elegance, keeping her mother’s optimism alive and well, even when writing about dire times, such as when Evelyn denied that there were bugs in the children’s food and that they were merely spices.
If you like this book/author, you might like:
A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana (CNF) by Haven Kimmel
Dress Your Children in Corduroy and Denim (CNF) by David Sedaris
Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation (NF) by Cokie Roberts
Angela’s Ashes (CNF) by Frank McCourt
Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (CNF) by Kathleen Norris
The Woman Who Walked into Doors (F) by Roddy Doyle
The Gathering Man (F) by Anne Enright
Other works by Terry Ryan:
None
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