The Heart of Things

A Midwestern Almanac

By: John Hildebrand

Narrated by: Dalan Edwin Decker

“I’ve never believed that living in one place means being one thing all the time, condemned like Minnie Pearl to wear the same hat for every performance. Life is more complicated than that.”

In this remarkable audiobook of days, John Hildebrand charts the overlapping rings - home, town, countryside - of life in the Midwest.

Like E. B. White, Hildebrand locates the humor and drama in ordinary life: church suppers, Friday night football, outdoor weddings, garden compost, family reunions, roadside memorials, camouflage clothing. In these wry, sharply observed essays, the Midwest isn’t "The Land Time Forgot", but a more complicated (and vastly more interesting) place where the good life awaits once we figure exactly out what it means.

From his home range in Northwestern Wisconsin, Hildebrand attempts to do just that by boiling down a calendar year to its rich marrow of weather, animals, family, and home - in other words, all the things that matter.

©2014 John Hildebrand (P)2018 Wisconsin Historical Society Press

needs a new narrator

I love the stories but the narrator tone drove me insane. reminded me of Chandler being - can you narrate any more annoying?