Craig Barnes has crafted a beautiful, evocative book. This vivid reminiscence of family life in the rural West explains--better than any general work I have read--the beliefs and values and personal strengths that enabled the so-called "greatest generation" to surmount the challenges presented by the Great Depression and the world's first global war. As a story of family life in America, GROWING UP TRUE is a boyhood classic which belongs on the special shelf that holds Russell Baker's book about GROWING UP in Baltimore.