A TOS Review of At Home In Dogwood Mudhole book

First off let me say that working on this last review is a sad experience for our family, it's the last review that we are doing for The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew. I will give an update on our reasons for retiring from the Review Crew in another post. Nothing bad, just life changes for us.

Now on to the review of At Home In Dogwood Mudhole: Volume One, Nothing That Eats, by Franklin Sanders. I got the softcover version that retails for $22.95, some of the other TOS Review Crew received the Kindle version that retails for $16.95. The age range for this book would be teen-adult.

I started reading the book and just could not get into it. LOL...by a long shot. So I handed it off to the homeschool husband and to the homeschool young man. They both loved it.

The book is set from 1995-2002, written by Franklin Sanders owner of the Moneychanger, a gold and silver bouillon seller. The book is a collection of monthly newsletters for the Moneychanger.

The guys thought the book was kinda like a snapshot of all the little adventures that they had setting up their farmstead. It was written like a journal, seemed like the author picked a topic and just started writing about it. Seemed like a grouping of letters written and then published in a book.

Homeschool husband is pretty cheap so he would not have spent $22.95 on the book, but he would have checked it out for free from the library. He did admit that he got $22.95 in entertainment value from reading the book. It was so good that he took it to work everyday to read on break.

Alright ladies start thinking about getting your hubby this as a Christmas gift!

My homeschool husband who went to college for English liked the way that he phrased stuff (I think that this is the reason I did not like the book). Just flipping through the table of contents you come across interesting chapter titles such as "Combustion Engines Are The Work Of The Devil", "One Disaster At A Time" (here homeschooling husband thought he had coined that last term!) LOL and "Demon Cow".

Homeschool husband says "They were Y2K preppers, They were like "I hope things don't go bad, but we will prepare just in case." Their extra food did not go to waste, they fed it to the pigs (stinky rice story that GROSSED me out when homeschool husband and young man described it. They wanted to get back to the land and the farm, they had been away from it all for about two generations. So they had made a lot of mistakes, killed a lot of animals (we have experience in this, we had lost about a dozen meat birds by accident. It happens to the best of us!). Husband thought that family was religious conservatives and they help found a church that had been meeting during the book. Homeschool husband loved the MRE's mixed with rice, as the author seemed to be a chef for pigs. lol.

Being a Southerner and a Civil War history buff, it’s obvious that his sympathies lie with the south in general. His story telling was able to open a window into his thought and feelings surrounding being a southerner.

The homeschool young man says "I like the chapter 'Shootout at Elmwood'."

Being that my son is a Civil War Re-enactor he was THRILLED to read that the author and members of the Sanders family are also Civil War Re-enactors. Although the author and his family are Confederates, the homeschool young man will not hold that against them :O) Homeschool young man also liked that fact that the author mentioned hotels and restaurants that he liked in the book, along with phone and addresses.

The Sanders family also does cemetery walks with Franklin Sanders acting General Nathan Bedford Forrest. A Lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War (July 13, 1821 – October 29, 1877). Yet another plus from the homeschooling husband too!

Things my guys were not thrilled with was the IRS scandal and the fact that the author ended up in jail a few times.
 

If you like reading At Home In Dogwood Mudhole, volume one, Nothing That Eats, then you might like volume two Best Thing We Ever Did and volume 3 has yet to be finished but is called The Sage Of Dogwood Mudhole also by Franklin Sanders. There is a free shipping code just for TOS readers! Enter in TOSFREE in the discount field when ordering. How great is that??

So all in all my guys thought that At Home In Dogwood Mudhole would make a great birthday or Christmas gift of the man in your life. I am sure that some ladies might enjoy the read, but I sure did not.

Come see what my fellow TOS Crew Reviews thought of the book.