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LOYD: Tender Boy in a Rugged Land
Home.
Most everyone can picture at least one place where they truly feel at home. A place that engenders emotions so comforting they can’t help but elicit a certain a location where all the senses work in harmony to provide a recollection of better times. The best of times.
For Loyd, the protagonist in these tales, home is not where he was born. His earliest life was so painful a different place had to rise up to replace the location of his birth. He needed a world where good memories reigned. A world where the smells, sounds, and feelings of maternal love conquered the sadness and shame of a boy who was different from other little boys but didn't understand how or why.
Focusing on the first twenty years of his life, Tender Boy in a Rugged Land recalls the stories of someone who has loved Southwestern Missouri, particularly McDonald County, all his life. The land, characters, spirituality, and even the paranormal all play important parts in creating a place he calls home.
Loyd has traveled much of this country and has visited exotic locations around the world. He lacks only a couple thousand miles from having circumnavigated the globe on his journeys, but ultimately, the Ozarks call him back home every time.
They always will.
Someday, a part of Loyd will rest well in the land he adopted as his own, and the land will know it did right by him.
Most everyone can picture at least one place where they truly feel at home. A place that engenders emotions so comforting they can’t help but elicit a certain a location where all the senses work in harmony to provide a recollection of better times. The best of times.
For Loyd, the protagonist in these tales, home is not where he was born. His earliest life was so painful a different place had to rise up to replace the location of his birth. He needed a world where good memories reigned. A world where the smells, sounds, and feelings of maternal love conquered the sadness and shame of a boy who was different from other little boys but didn't understand how or why.
Focusing on the first twenty years of his life, Tender Boy in a Rugged Land recalls the stories of someone who has loved Southwestern Missouri, particularly McDonald County, all his life. The land, characters, spirituality, and even the paranormal all play important parts in creating a place he calls home.
Loyd has traveled much of this country and has visited exotic locations around the world. He lacks only a couple thousand miles from having circumnavigated the globe on his journeys, but ultimately, the Ozarks call him back home every time.
They always will.
Someday, a part of Loyd will rest well in the land he adopted as his own, and the land will know it did right by him.
136 pages, Paperback
Published July 29, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 12, 2023
Michael Lloyd Gregory has written a remarkable book. A magical book.
Growing up a tender boy in a rugged land is never easy, and young Loyd had his share of burdens that have crushed or embittered others. Yet by the grace of Aunt Jane and other vividly drawn denizens of the Ozarks, Mr. Gregory has emerged triumphant in his love of family, his respect for the land and its creatures, and his ability to immerse the reader in the sounds, flavors, and delicious quirkiness of his upbringing.
I laughed, I cried, I wondered, and I was transported. The photographs and drawings created by the author himself add to the rich and satisfying experience of being invited into Loyd's world where anything can happen- and often did.
I look forward to reading much more from this poetic, powerful voice.
Growing up a tender boy in a rugged land is never easy, and young Loyd had his share of burdens that have crushed or embittered others. Yet by the grace of Aunt Jane and other vividly drawn denizens of the Ozarks, Mr. Gregory has emerged triumphant in his love of family, his respect for the land and its creatures, and his ability to immerse the reader in the sounds, flavors, and delicious quirkiness of his upbringing.
I laughed, I cried, I wondered, and I was transported. The photographs and drawings created by the author himself add to the rich and satisfying experience of being invited into Loyd's world where anything can happen- and often did.
I look forward to reading much more from this poetic, powerful voice.
February 28, 2023
I don't give many books a five star rating, but this short memoir deserves it. The introduction is a poetic tribute to the Ozarks. Then we meet Loyd, whose mother neglected him, but a devoted elementary teacher accepted and motivated him. We meet his father and learn of his hard life, as well as his mother who was cruelly treated when she was a child. Other loving relatives share the pages, along with an early best friend Kimmie who is involved in a charming chigger experience. Gregory concludes that "love always wins." And this book is a winner.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews