Pennsylvania Love Song

During the Thanksgiving season of 1955, this engaging story of three generations of women opens in a prologue with Nancy, the book’s author, eight years old, riding in the back seat of her parents’ station wagon with brothers, Andy, 10, and K.C, 6. Andy has been teasing Nancy and she’s gotten feisty with him. Their mother begins to sing a long-ago song from her own childhood, “Over the river and through the woods….” to divert the children as her husband drives through Pittsburgh, PA. Nancy seeks to overpower Andy’s mischief with a high-volume entry into the words “… to grandmother’s house we go….” And in an instant we smoothly shift from the soot-blackened city of Pittsburgh and slide upon … the white and drifted snow, in a horse-drawn open sleigh …  and the entrance into Grandmother’s (aka Nannie’s) home, where the first-generation story begins.

We slip back then to 1910 in Mahaffey, PA, where the author’s grandmother, Florence, and her seven siblings have gathered at the family farm at summer’s end. We spend pleasant time with them as they sing, laugh, reminisce about the past, contemplate the present, and vibrantly enjoy the gathering.

At one point, Florence picks up her mandolin and begins to strum and sing a popular song, “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey?” All join in. Following the final plea to Bill Bailey, an active political discussion arises about allowing women to vote, along with the acute need for better worker treatment by employers. 

Florence gazes off in a quiet moment, reflecting that Papa has spent all his days working their farm a few miles uptown while always encouraging each of his children to attend college. She thinks how far and wide several of the siblings are. She will soon return to Pittsburgh to teach her beloved music wisdom. Others, like Edith, the oldest, also a teacher, will soon leave for Chicago, and brother Bert will travel back to his Michigan university to resume studying economics. 

Pennsylvania Love Song is a fictional story based largely on known facts, family memories, letters, and more. Those factors eloquently frame the story of a large, closely knit family in rich detail between 1910 through 1950. Character development is of a depth that adds layers to our knowledge, while the complex arc is artfully created to provide the reader deep insight. Kilgore’s technique of alternating chapters between events happening in Florence’s family the 1910s with the 1940s in Flossie’s family throughout the book takes us even deeper.     

Music titles of the time are also chapter titles, threaded so aptly through each chapter that it becomes a vivid, sensuous part of the whole story. (I paused to listen to some of the chapter-title songs in my desire to be more fully present as I read; it bordered on sublime.)

Would I read more by this author? Absolutely! This is the second of the four books Nancy Kilgore has written that I have read, reviewed, and hold in high regard for all the reasons I mention above.

In conclusion, the experience of journeying to these times and places through Kilgore’s character’s eyes also took me back to my parents’ and grandparents’ lives. As I placed my family’s stories, photos, and conversations into these vibrant years with their respective music, hairstyles, food, fashion, and more, I was gifted by the overall rich sensory experience of Pennsylvania Love Song, truly a book to enrich us all.