I Know an Old Lady

by Margaret Standafer

It’s the summer of 1972, and Kansas wheat fields are baking under the relentless sun. Teenagers are celebrating the first taste of freedom as they line their pockets with newly printed driver’s licenses and long-awaited paychecks. Days off are spent at the town’s only lake, nights under the yellow lights of the drive-in restaurant.

But Billy Tupper’s life is a far cry from that of other teenagers. One mistake too many lands him in front of a judge who sentences him to a summer working for Old Lady Baxter, the victim of his latest carelessness…and the rumored child killer of Munroe, Kansas. As Billy sweats his way through endless months of mowing her lawn, weeding her garden, and painting her house, he also searches for the evidence to prove she’s guilty, but what he finds, and what he learns about himself, will change his life forever.

I Know an Old Lady is a touching coming-of-age story of loss and redemption, of understanding and compassion, and of a family torn apart and slowly put back together.

I Know an Old Lady is Billy Tupper’s story.

Genres: Fiction, Coming Of Age, Book Club, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Young Adult, Mystery Thriller

329 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 8, 2020

About the author

I have been in love with reading since I was old enough to pick up a book. From helping Frodo save Middle Earth to screaming at Scarlett O’Hara to hurry up and realize Rhett Butler was the only man for her, books have taken me on countless adventures.

It took me much longer to realize I also love writing. For years I ignored my husband’s subtle and not-so-subtle hints that I should give writing a try. He was convinced I could do it. I wasn’t. When I finally sat down and started to put some of the stories in my head down on paper, I discovered not only could I do it, I discovered a whole new world of possibilities and adventures…a world where I could control the outcome. I’ve never been happier!

It is my sincere hope that you enjoy my writing. I’d love to hear from you whether it’s about something I’ve written or about something someone else has written and that you’ve read and loved. That’s the great thing about Goodreads…I can be a reader and a writer!

Reviews

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great novel. It is set in a small town in Kansas during the summer of 1972. It is a heartwarming story of how a 16 year old boy, Billy Tupper, changes during that summer while he is doing required work for an old lady---Old Lady Baxter. He had gotten into trouble and the judge sentenced him to work for her all summer. Billy's mother had died 5 years ago and his father had turned to drinking to get through his grief. He wasn't providing Billy with much of anything but a roof over his head. Billy also had 3 friends he hangs out with who are ongoing characters in the story. There is a long-standing rumor in town that Mrs. Baxter had killed 4 kids who went missing.

At first Billy hates doing to Mrs. Baxter's place to work. However, as the story progresses, he becomes personally involved with her and his actions show the good in his character. His work for her also brings about changes in his relationship with his father and home situation. I won't go any further to avoid spoiling the plot for others.

The development of Billy's character is so well crafted. The reader sees the typical attitudes and behaviors of adolescence but also a hidden caring in him that was cultivated by his mother. The episodes involving his friends were also fun to read and very typical of adolescent behavior.

It is definitely a feel good book and I highly recommend it.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Know an Old Lady is a wonderfully written coming-of-age story that will leave readers young and old feeling moved and inspired. The book tells the story of a troubled young man, Billy Tupper, sentenced to spend his summer working for curmudgeonly Old Lady Baxter. The relationship between Billy and Baxter evolves and deepens over the course of the novel and winds up changing both of their lives. The author Margaret Standafer possesses a unique talent for crafting characters and settings the pull you into the world of the story. Young adult readers looking for a book with emotion and depth will love I Know an Old Lady.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 great writing and story, I had a hard time putting it down. A couple of editing/spelling errors.

[Kelly Channick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Realistic Coming Of Age Tear Jerker

While the beginning may have seemed slow, I thoroughly enjoyed the character buildup and the unraveling mystery at the center of the story. This book brought me back to the days where things seemed simpler. Additionally, I truly enjoyed the message of hard work paying off—especially with some mystery thrown in.

[Bonnie Ladd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coming of age

Good read, liked that the main character was a teenager boy. Enjoyed the interaction of the different generations and a little mystery, too! Spoiler alert : tissues needed at end.

[Jayme · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. The characters were honest and fleshed out and the setting was spot on. Standafer's description of the Fourth of July parade and celebration in a small town had me googling the author's background because she perfectly described the many small town parades that I had attended that I knew she had to be a Midwest girl. I will be reading more from this author.

[Lauren Tullio · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t find words to describe how much I truly adored this book. In an uncertain world this book brings you back down to earth and grounds you in the fundamentals of pure kindness. Wholesome, funny, nostalgic, all while having that page-turning edge. I truly, truly, loved this book.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really sure how this book found its way onto my reading list but, I'm glad it did. It was a Young Adult book and so, the writing is a lot more detail oriented than I like; however, the character development was good and I loved the main characters, Billy and Mrs. Baxter. This story takes place in the summer of 1972 and Billy has been sentenced by a small-town judge to do community service for Mrs. Baxter for negligently catching a wheat field on fire. Billy begrudgingly begins his sentence and then a relationship begins between him and Mrs. Baxter. Of course, there have been all types of rumors about Mrs. Baxter and missing children from their small town. Billy's friends convince him to search around Mrs. Baxter's property to see if he can find anything that will help determine what happened to the missing children. This story was interesting and heart-warming. A lot of lessons to be learned.

[Fran · Rating 4 out of 5]

I Know an Old Lady is a well-written coming of age novel. Standafer does an excellent job of characterization with the two main characters, Billy Tupper and Mrs Alma Baxter. Billy’s mother died five years previously, his sister was taken to be raised by an aunt, and his father couldn’t cope with his wife’s death. Billy has pretty much been raising himself and getting into minor trouble as a young teen.

When Billy appears before a judge after his last run in with the law, the judge sentences him to a summer of working for an elderly woman - Mrs Baxter. Billy learns a lot about life and himself during this hard summer. A great coming of age story.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first time reading a book by this author. I absolutely loved this book. It was nothing that I expected and yet so much more. I loved the conversations between the characters and I loved the characters themselves. And while I do find it hard to believe that a 16 year-old boy can turn his life around that dramatically in one summer (like housekeeping…a 16 year old boy??!!!), I found the story, very endearing and hopeful.

[Amy Schultz · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a pleasant surprise! I wish I could remember how this found its way onto my list so I could give credit where credit was due! An easy read with a good ending, a coming of age story with some good lessons, some interesting characters and a pretty smooth flow with the story line. I'm not the best at writing reviews but this book was just the right one at the right time for me!

[Nora Wolfenbarger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book tremendously. Coming from a small town, I related to the story. The author did an amazing job of showing the conflicts of teenagers growing up, and the impact one person can have on others. The plot threads keep the reader guessing. There is a nice balance of intensity and sweetness to the story that keeps the reader hooked. Highly recommend this book.

[Nana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! A coming of age book with all the warm hearted and funny incidents that are part of that process. If you want a feel good book that can transport you back to your youth then this is the one.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful story about growing up, love and forgiveness. Did the mean old lady kill four children? Billy and his friends want to know. Set in the early 1970’s this is a good coming of age story when life was a little simpler. You will find yourself singing the song.

[Toni L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. One of my new favorites.

[Corinne Carson · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a pleasant surprise of a book. I’m glad I stumbled upon it. I don’t think anyone who reads it would be disappointed.

[Maria Christopherson cone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! Great story and a few twists to it. Made me happy in the end. :)

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sweet story. Billy and Mrs. Baxter were both great characters.

[Julie Moon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this story- it would make a good movie. Kind of a slow burn, but worth it. I highly recommend it as a read aloud for upper elementary through high school.

[Robin Landry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent coming-of-age story. 16-year-old Billy Tupper reminded me a lot of Holden Caufield in Catcher in the Rye, but with greater humor and more empathy. The subplot of Mrs. Baxter and the question of what happened to the missing children also provides some suspense and an interesting plot twist at the end.

[Joan Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Up there with "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Oh my goodness--I lived this incredible superbly written book. I dreaded it being over. The characters were so artfully developed, the dialogue so naturally realistic and the sheer pleasure of getting to know Billy and "Old Lady Baxter" ! This needs to be made into a major motion picture!-- JW

[K.S. Abhishek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, so I was totally not prepared for this.

I had been having a middling reading season till I came upon this book.

It tells the story of Billy Tupper, a young boy who though is mostly like your usual spoilt teen comes to learn a lot about life and compassion after an unexpected turn of events lands him in the last place he would have wanted to be during the summer.

It is not your usual coming of age story nor is it a cliched drama. It is something much deeper and simpler at the same time. I was almost tearing up by the time I finished it.
Great characterization, good narration and a clear story arc.
Pick this up, like now.

[D. Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Know an Old Lady reminds me of those books that my English teachers would highly recommend, not only because of their writing quality but also deeper content and important themes that we young people “needed to know.” As someone who today likes to write, I am impressed by the author’s mastery of characterization, description, dialogue—and emphasizing life lessons that we all do need to learn, such as not to jump to conclusions based on sketchy information about another person, especially someone whom we don’t know. Sound familiar?
It took me a few pages to realize that this qualifies as a historical novel. The story is set in Munroe, Kansas, but in 1972, when innovations such as microfiche were still cutting edge. Had I been writing it, I might have added a one-liner stating that at the beginning of the book to orient the reader—although it is in the book blurb.
As much as I admired the skill and craft displayed in this book, I do worry that it will fail to resonate with many in its target audience—today’s young adults. The principal characters are male, and most readers in that age group are female (although when I was young, I preferred novels with strong male leads); the primary female characters are another teen, Julie, whom Billy has a thing for that eventually pays off, and an elderly widow, Old Lady Baxter, for whom his hate turns to something akin to compassion and caring and eventually gratitude. Adults looking to buy a book for a teen might appreciate the meaningful “clean” themes and messages but be turned off by some of the true-to-life dialogue (as in sprinkles of four-letter words).
The longer we’ve lived, the more opportunity we’ve had to know a victim of rumors and gossip personally. Gossip has a way of taking on a life of its own; as more people spread a rumor, the more deliciously embellished it becomes. Over time, the fact that it is divorced from facts ceases to matter. Everyone accepts it, and it becomes fact. Few human activities have destroyed as many innocent lives as gossip.
Such was the unfortunate case for Mrs. Baxter, who has been tried and convicted by some in her community of, decades earlier, kidnapping and murdering four young children, each from less-than-ideal home situations marked by poverty and neglect. She was not tried or convicted in court, and there is no solid evidence linking her to their disappearances. Their bodies were never even found. But that is irrelevant; in the minds of some, including some teenagers, the old woman did “it.” Her sentence is to live an isolated and excluded life, a family-less widow, who, it becomes apparent as the story unfolds, was the mother of a lost son, Tommy, who died when still a young child.
If there is a silver lining to 16-year-old Billy’s restorative-justice sentence (after he unwittingly sets farm fields afire, including Mrs. Baxter’s, with a carelessly launched cigarette butt—or so she alleged to the authorities) that is guaranteed to ruin his entire summer by forcing him to perform whatever odd job the old woman demands of him, it is that working there will give him and his three best friends (John, Joel, Steve) the perfect opportunity to snoop around and prove their case against the old shrew. He starts off wanting the horrible woman to be guilty of the heinous crimes, but slowly, as he comes to know her, he dreads the same outcome. Billy finds that the cursed Lady Baxter fills some of the holes in his miserable life, which has become increasingly a litany of misdemeanors and lost opportunities to better himself.
Billy’s home environment is complicated; after his mother’s death five years earlier, his father has descended into a defeating lifestyle of drunkenness, largely abandoning any prior interest in being a parent. His little sister, Tracy, was sent off to live with their aunt, but Billy was left behind to make a go of his adolescence with their derelict dad.
As often happens, familiarity brings a change of heart. Billy’s deeply held assumptions about the woman (aggravated by his “unjust” summer sentence) gradually ebb away after his daily contact with her. Following a few short weeks on the job, he fears discovering that evidence that would implicate her in the children’s deaths.
Mrs. Baxter suffers not only from town gossip but Alzheimer’s disease. Young Billy comes to care enough about her to research the illness to understand some of her more bizarre behaviors and conversations; gradually, he learns from her during her lucid times that she had actively tried to help him and his sister after their mother had died, when she realized their father was allowing his grief to shipwreck his parenting. Billy learns even more about Alma Elizabeth Baxter during their talks, including the story of her young son, a victim of Down syndrome and his father’s abuse.
The ending is surprising in many ways, so I will not spoil it. I anticipated some of it, but not all. Suffice to say, if you start reading it, you need to read it until the end. I just hope young people will. There are lessons here in this story for all readers, no matter what our ages—for example, that rumors sometimes have some basis in fact but rarely tell the complete story.
I’ve given this book four and a half stars rounded up to five. I feel it needs another cycle of editing to trim some of the “fat” so that it will move along faster and hopefully hook young adult readers, who do need to read a book of this caliber completely through until the end. And not just because their English teachers told them to.

[Marcy O’Dell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I thought this was a heartwarming book and I enjoyed the developing relationship between Billy and Mrs. Baxter. My main critique is that Billy seemed like a highly stereotyped “disgruntled teen” character and I feel like many of the adolescents I know have more depth to them. The “mystery” aspect was also a bit drawn out for me and predictable. I did appreciate the growth Billy’s character made throughout the story.

[Chris Cournoyer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried but it was just too boring for me. I got about 150 pages in but had to let this one go. The parts of the book where it was just the kid and the old lady were good for the most part, but when they switched to the kid and his friends, I found the book dragging. I did tell my wife to read the book though, as she may enjoy this one.

[A Busscher · Rating 3 out of 5]

alright, kind of a slow progessing story. I knew half way through that she never murdered the kids, she got them out of an abusive relationship. I was surprised that she got tracy out. It was a bit of a bow tie at the ending, when he became a nice kid, went to college, got his dream job, married Julie and his dad and him are on great terms.

[Joanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great book, couldn’t put it down.

An old lady and a teen, with nothing in common except a summer of forced work on her house.....which works itself into a change to both of them.

Heart warming and couldn’t put it down because a mystery is involved as well.

[Dawn&Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Predictable and a bit of a slow plot.

The character development was good but the story dragged a bit. I found myself wanting to speed up the story to see what was going to happen. It wasn’t a surprise ending at all.

[J. Michael Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful book, one of the best I’ve read this year, and one I recommend to others. My only criticism is that it starts out slow, forcing us to spend too much time with four teenaged boys whose take on the world is shallow and tedious. But by page 50, the book finally takes off, and it is worth the wait.

One of the four boys, Billy, has been sentenced by a judge to work for “Old Lady Baxter” because of damage she claimed he did to her property. It has something to do with throwing his sparking cigarette butts into some dry grass on her property. He has to show up every day for the entire summer and do whatever work she tells him—mow the grass, weed the garden, bring things down from the attic, and paint the entire house, a mansion, by himself.

He is livid and hates the old woman. To make matters worse, all the kids in town have heard that she was the one who murdered 4 children back in the 30s and 40s. (The story is set in 1972, the year Billy has turned 16.) While Billy is working for her, he starts out repulsed by the look of her—her age and her physical condition. He doesn’t want to get near her or (heaven help him) actually touch her. Furthermore, he hopes, as long as he has to be on her property working, that he can discover evidence that she did indeed kill those four children.

Billy himself has had a hard life. When he was 11, his mother died from cancer, his beloved sister was sent away to live with an aunt, and his father turned to alcohol and disconnected totally from Billy, leaving him without food, guidance, or care afforded to most children.

Billy is a list-maker, and as we read the novel, we are treated to a number of his lists, such as, “The five people I would like to see dead,” “Where I would go if I had my own car.”

Old Lady Baxter is a remarkable character in her own right, and in some ways, the star of the novel, even though Billy is the protagonist. As the summer proceeds, the old lady encounters problems of her own, and Billy is transformed.

This is one of those books that gives us an edge-of-the-seat plot, twisting and turning, and a story—as in, something happens to Billy, and the people around him because of his experience.

[M D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coming of age stories are always popular because they pull on the heartstrings of nostalgia. Usually, they involve a couple of entirely different-type people being thrown together by circumstances they cannot control. Together, they eventually learn to coexist and voila; mutual benefit and subsequent happiness. Although most readers’ lives are not so dramatic, people remember pivotal points in their lives when the future starts to come into focus. We are attached. ‘I Know an Old Lady’ is no exception.
Billy has had it tough since his mother died at a young age, leaving him and his sister alone with their father who quickly turned to alcohol and away from his children. He leans hard on his three friends and they become close, especially Joel, even though he is an a-hole. Tracy, the sister, and Billy are eventually separated by Aunt Cindy. They wanted her, but not him, claiming not to have room for Billy, too. This, in spite of being ‘well off’.
Life becomes even harder for Billy by the age of sixteen. He is sentenced to spend the summer of 1972 helping an old woman, Mrs. Baxter, around her homestead which was surrounded by the wheat fields of Kansas. You can surmise what happens. It is a heartwarming story but a bumpy ride for the reader. Mrs. Baxter has Alzheimer’s. It’s not clear at the start but she knows that she wants her house and fence painted before summer is over. It’s a big job. But also a learning experience. Billy starts out hating everything about the old lady. Mrs. Baxter starts out as a mean old hag.
I liked the book. It did all the things that I knew it would. I became connected to Billy and his frustration with spending the summer forced to work. Although Mrs. Baxter’s rough exterior was put forth, I knew there had to be more to her story. It did seem to me convenient that the father was able to put away the bottle so easily after five years of drinking. There are good morals that eventually surface, and the transformation that Billy makes is heartwarming, even if a bit predictable.