Strangers tend to tell me things : a memoir of love, loss, and coming home

In Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things --her follow-up memoir to the NYT bestselling The Mighty Queens of Freeville --America's most popular advice columnist, "Ask Amy," shares her journey of family, second chances, and finding love.

By peeling back the curtain of her syndicated advice column, Amy Dickinson reveals much of the inspiration and motivation that has fueled her calling. Through a series of linked essays, this moving narrative picks up where her earlier memoir left off.

Exploring central themes of romance, death, parenting, self-care, and spiritual awakening, this touching and heartfelt homage speaks to all who have faced challenges in the wake of life's twists and turns. From finding love in middle-age to her storied experience with stepparenting to overcoming disordered eating to her final moments spent with her late mother, Dickinson's trademark humorous tone delivers punch and wit that will empower, entertain, and heal.

Author Notes

Amy Dickinson grew up on a dairy farm in Freeville, New York. She graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She has had numerous jobs including a receptionist for The New Yorker magazine, a producer for NBC News in Washington and New York, a lounge singer, and a freelance writer. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, Allure, and O magazine. She wrote a column for Time Magazine that focused on family life and parenting from 1999 to 2002. In 2003, The Tribune chose her to write the successor to the long-running Ann Landers column. Her syndicated advice column Ask Amy appears in more than 200 newspapers across the country. She is also the host of a biweekly feature on NPR's Talk of the Nation and her commentaries and radio stories have been featured on NPR's All Things Considered.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Dickinson, who writes the syndicated "Ask Amy" advice column, follows The Mighty Queens of Freeville with this similarly themed memoir of love lost and found. Returning as a divorced adult to the small town near Ithaca, N.Y., where she grew up, Dickinson did not expect to find love; her primary motivation for moving was to be near her aging mother. But most of this memoir is about falling in love with a prior acquaintance, carrying out a courtship under the prying eyes of a small town, and remarrying and becoming a stepmother. Reading the audiobook, Dickinson's emotions comes through as she recounts the ups and downs of these years, especially the slow decline of her mother and her own debilitating grief following her mother's death. She is more spirited while reading the lighter elements of her story, gleefully recounting a series of terrible dates between her two marriages and describing the various indignities of middle age. Dickinson's delivery can be rushed and at times giggly, with many sentences rising in pitch at the end so that they resemble questions. Still, the intimacy of this memoir rests on Dickinson's authenticity, so these small imperfections only add to the listening experience. A Hachette hardcover. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

A popular newspaper columnist candidly shares more memories of her altruistic life, past and present.In this follow-up to The Mighty Queens of Freeville (2009), Dickinson, the ever wise voice (and Ann Landers successor) behind the widely syndicated "Ask Amy" advice column, is wryly sincere and poignant in her further stories about how she left tiny Freeville, New York, for more adventurous pastures, then returned to downshift through midlife to "resume the lifelong job of growing up." Her book is rooted in landscape and people, featuring the bucolic hamlet (pop. 520) of her childhood and the family members who live close to the cozy house she inherited from her mother. Dickinson shares deeply entrenched memories of life on the farm in her early years, with a gaggle of siblings and her restless parents, Buck and Jane. The author also examines the domino effect of a deflated marriage, infidelity, single motherhood, and a temporary return to Freeville to regroup before heading off to stints in Washington, D.C., and Chicago. Anchoring the memoir is a gloriously detailed chronicling of her romantic courtship with Bruno, a former high school classmate who would steal her heart back home. Their marriage, when Dickinson was 50, had several minor stumbling blocks but successfully blended together a family of five daughters. "I was a newlywed," she writes. "An over-the-hill, root-dying, hot-flash-suffering, slightly lumpy newlywed, but stilla bride." Throughout the book, anecdotes on small-town life, blind dating, and convoluted tree removal intertwine with heart-rending moments about her aging father and stubborn, increasingly frail mother, who forced the author to face the sobering reality of relocating her to a care facility after months of "strategizing, subterfuge, and frustrated coercion." Readers unfamiliar with Dickinson should begin with her first book, which gives a marvelous overview of a woman returning to her roots to restore her faith in family. In this extension of her debut memoir, Dickinson remains an engagingly chatty, witty, and relatable writer with sage insights. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Advice columnist Dickinson, of Ask Amy, moved to her hometown in upstate New York in the early 2000s, after having lived in major cities like New York and Washington, D.C. Not only is the town's population sparse, hovering somewhere near 500, but most of its residents seem related to her. Yet this return does not seem to stifle her; in fact, the homecoming opens an unexpected door to love. Who says there's no life in a small town? For in Freeville, New York, single parent Dickinson meets another single parent, someone she knew in school, and thus begins a sweet and tender courtship. Still, the subsequent marriage and the blending of children are not without bumps, and she deftly recounts such moments truthfully but without trespassing on family members' privacy. This is a memoir of relationships, as Dickinson tenuously connects with her ne'er-do-well father and helps care for her ailing mother, the loss of whom renders her bereft. Although she tries many remedies, it is really the passage of time and a line from the movie Tootsie which see her through. Dickinson's warm and generous spirit makes a reader feel as though they've been invited in for hot cocoa on a cold day.--Curbow, Joan Copyright 2017 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Dickinson (The Mighty Queens of Freeville) pulls the curtain back on her life and treats readers to a glimpse inside the world of the woman behind the internationally famous "Ask Amy" advice column. Finding it easier to give advice then to take it, -Dickinson presents a deeply personal memoir about her quaint town of Freeville, NY. Poignant, emotional, funny, and relatable, this moving memoir will appeal to anyone who has ever suffered through divorce, middle age, child rearing, aging parents, or falling in love. To err is human, and Dickinson makes mistakes and hilarious missteps (which she gleefully recounts) so that her readers don't have to. The work is narrated by the author, who brings poise, laughter, and familiarity to the telling of her story. VERDICT For fans of women's relationships and memoirs. ["If you don't already love this author from her advice column and NPR's Wait Wait.Don't Tell Me, this latest work will make you want to move to Freeville to become her new neighbor": LJ 12/16 review of the Hachette hc.]-Erin Cataldi, Johnson Cty. P.L., Franklin, IN © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Author's Note	p. xi
Introduction: Welcome to Freeville	p. 1
Chapter 1 We Played with Matches	p. 9
Chapter 2 Romance: A Brief History	p. 22
Chapter 3 Dating Blindly	p. 32
Chapter 4 Night of the Chipmunk Hands	p. 39
Chapter 5 Journeys End in Lovers Meeting	p. 45
Chapter 6 Meeting Mr. Darcy	p. 49
Chapter 7 The Antidote for Longing	p. 60
Chapter 8 Let Me Get My Puppets	p. 67
Chapter 9 Life Renovation Offer	p. 73
Chapter 10 The Grenade in the Kitchen	p. 75
Chapter 11 Paying the Piper	p. 83
Chapter 12 We Did	p. 94
Chapter 13 The Powdered Wife	p. 103
Chapter 14 Real Housewives	p. 112
Chapter 15 All the Single Ladies	p. 116
Chapter 16 What the Dog Did	p. 121
Chapter 17 We Abide	p. 128
Chapter 18 Heroic Measures	p. 140
Chapter 19 The Fallacy of Closure	p. 150
Chapter 20 The Rising Tide of Things	p. 160
Chapter 21 Does It Spark Joy?	p. 167
Chapter 22 Imperfect Pitch	p. 172
Chapter 23 Counting Sheep	p. 180
Chapter 24 How to Use a Saw	p. 188
Chapter 25 Next of Kin	p. 195
Chapter 26 Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things	p. 206
Chapter 27 Mother's Day	p. 218
Acknowledgments	p. 223

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