Report From Grimes Creek After a Hard Winter (1990) by Nancy Stringfellow

"Report from Grimes Creek After a Hard Winter is a beautiful book. Should be read by people around this wide world. A strength-giving book."

— Pete Seeger

A memoir comprised of five essays, three poems, and a letter to her daughter, Report from Grimes Creek was compiled by folksinger Rosalie Sorrels from her mother’s writings. Sorrels recites some of the essays and poems on her 1990 CD of the same title, including "Social Security," the profound and often quoted essay, which found its first publication in The Congressional Record. This little book sheds insight into the life of a woman who retired from her life in the book business to the small cabin her husband built for her in the mountains north of Boise.

Nancy Kelly Stringfellow managed The Book Shop on Boise’s Main Street for more than 20 years. Many fondly say that through her selection of fine books over the years she taught Boise how to read. But she remained a teacher to poets, painters, readers, and thinkers of the "greater-Idaho" West long after she retired. She wrote book reviews over the years of works she felt Idahoans should read, and she died in Boise in 1994.

These stories are about growing older while remaining full of life, full of interest and fascination with the world, even while beginning a period of withdrawal from it . . . . There is a deeper level in these stories, though, a curious bargain struck with solitude that holds their greater value. Nancy Stringfellow’s analysis of the extreme conditions of life in early Idaho hit hard, but even tougher is her willingness—her absolute joy, even—in choosing to go it alone.