On the home front

“Jack Clark’s wondrous celebration of his working-class mother and her natural gifts as a storyteller has touched me deeply. Hurray for Mary Jo Ryan Clark and her boy Jack.” —Studs Terkel The book itself is a marvel of writerly restraint. Jack…fades into near-invisibility, as his mother narrates in her own no-nonsense voice…Some are private moments—being 4 years old, getting shiny new shoes and remembering looking down at them as she toes circles in the sawdust on a butcher shop floor. “Others brush against history—news of Pearl Harbor, or the Dorchester, a World War II troop ship sunk off the coast of Greenland. It was famous for the four chaplains who gave up their life vests to other sailors, but Bill, who was dating Mary Jo’s younger sister, wasn’t one of the lucky survivors… “The book’s strength is that it doesn’t stoop to Greatest Generation mythologizing. The Clarks are real people and Mary Jo doesn’t try to make them heroes.” —Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times