Anneville: A Memoir of the Great Depression - Paperback

by Thomas G. Robinson (Author)

Anneville is the true story of a prosperous, middle class family who were suddenly plunged into abject poverty by the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing economic catastrophe. The father, overwhelmed by despair abandons his wife and seven children to fend for themselves. "Thos" Robinson, who was not quite five years old when The Great Depression struck, provides us with an eye witness account of his family's struggle for physical, psychological, and spiritual survival. Robinson tells his inspirational tale with a minimum of self pity, sentiment and nostalgia; and a surprising amount of beauty, and a happy helping of comic relief. The memoir covers the years 1931-1936. Robinson says that these years were the most important and formative of his life. He says, "It was as though I was tempered and hammered into steel on the anvil of Anneville." (Anneville is a pseudonym that he uses in deference to those townspeople who might be offended by the stern picture he draws of the actual town where he spent his boyhood.) Thos is the narrator of this book, but it is his siblings and his mother who are the kind of fascinating, loveable, and unique characters who compel readers to keep turning the pages of a good book like Anneville.