Picking Over the Bones

Praise for Judith Ireland

 “This is a wonderfully enjoyable read. I think many of us might have driven through Tifton, stopped for lunch, and hurried on, thinking we’d seen the place. Judith Ireland shows us different. Her details are so particular, her nuances so layered, her observations so flavorful, she draws me into experiencing this little ‘50s town in Georgia as more than just a town, it’s a world. For me, as I read these stories, Tifton begins to feel familiar: I feel like I know this place. It reminds me of my own hometown growing up, my own childhood and teenage years—which is curious, because my hometown and childhood were nothing like Ireland’s. The emotions are my own but the memories evoking them are hers: it’s almost as if I’m “remembering” her life as my own. That’s what the best memoirs do: they let us experience what the world would be like if we were someone else; and that’s what Judith Ireland achieves in Picking Over the Bones.” 

–Tamim Ansary, author of West of Kabul, East of New York