The True Life Story of Isobel Roundtree: A Novel

by Kathleen Wallace King

Tells the story of the Roundtree family and the colorful characters that inhabit southern Indiana in the 1960s

178 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1993

Reviews

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Isobel Roundtree is a young girl who grew up on a hog farm in southern Indiana during the early 1960s. Her life is not perfect, but whose is? The story begins with the arguments between her parents, Prince and Clematis. Her mother leaves the family again to pursue a singing career. Prince and Isobel go to another town in Indiana to see her mother sing. Isobel is told to stay in the truck, but she is headstrong and follows her dad. She sneaks into the nightclub where her mother is singing. They are stunned to discover that Clematis is singing in a dive bar where she sings and strips. Isobel races back to the truck, but Dad doesn't come back to the truck that night.
When Isobel wakes up, she leaves the truck to find her dad. She ends up at the police station, where she waits in a room for her dad to find her. While in this room, she meets a woman named Emma Swallow. For some reason, Isobel writes their address onto some paper and gives it to Emma. She tells her they could use a housekeeper. Emma arrives at their house a few months later.
This is not a story resembling "Mary Poppins." It is often raw and simultaneously hopeful. It is a story of lives filled with challenges while maintaining the desire to deal with them.
I truly enjoyed this book!

[Wendy Johansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rough life from the perspective of an 10 year old girl in 1963 is the subject of this book. It brought to mind some of my own childhood memories, including a life altering house fire when I was about 6 years old. Living in a tiny farming community in the Midwest, I was aware even then of domestic abuse and poverty. I had a sense of what adultry and mental deficiencies were. In hindsight, my mother and perhaps my father suffered from depression. We never thought of ourselves as the poorest of our town, having books, a loving mother, a big old house on five acres of land in the middle of town, and all the freedom in our world we could ask for. There were others less fortunate than us, especially those families who came and left in less than a school year. But we were poor. I didn't come to this realization until I'd mostly grown up. The story was true to how a child could observe certain behaviors of the adults in her life, knowing things weren't altogether right, yet failed to understand exactly what was happening. My heart aches for Isobel Roundtree. I hope she grows up and survives her childhood.

[Aggie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure if i liked it . I liked the narrator but was confused the whole time

[Giavonna Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this after the passing of my father, it had many ties to what was going on in my life at that time so it touched me in a personal way. Great story, I would recommend to all young women.