Shuffletown USA: A Multi-Voice Memoir

Rating:
Summary: Love to have been there
Review: Great fun to read. Shows a side of the people and places of the south seldom recounted.

Rating:
Summary: A Delightful Surprise Awaits You in "Shuffletown"..
Review: "Shuffletown USA" is far from being your ordinary reminiscence on days gone by. Instead, Judy Rozzelle uses a unique and interesting technique of stepping out of the storyteller role and bringing her characters forward. Although one's immediate reaction is to think of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" in presentation, "Shuffletown USA" is, instead, not so much orchestrated by an on-stage interpreter/moderator but an off-stage, in the wings, facilitator. Suddenly, without the reader's conscious knowledge, the characters in the book are speaking directly to you in their own words rather than Judy reading their feelings and thoughts to you. For all of us who look back on our hometowns wistfully, this love letter masquerading as a memoir is touching, humorous and delightful in both content and presentation.



Rating:
Summary: Shuffletown
Review: In Shuffletown, Judy Rozzelle has crafted both a paean and a historical timepiece. On one level, it is a collection of memories of interesting personalties, hilarious events and local tragedies that marked a community over several generations. These are the kind of stories that we would reminisce with our long-time friends. Yet, Shuffletown also is a symbol for a small-town America that has been all but swallowed by urban sprawl with its attendant roads, commercial developments and chain stores. Ultimately, Shuffletown should become required reading for future generations and serve as a reminder of the richness of a life in quieter towns where people know everyone and care for each other.

Rating:
Summary: Shuffletown USA feels like home
Review: Judy Rozzelle sure has a way with words and capturing the essence of people. I certainly found this to be true in Shuffletown USA. I've always been a firm believer in maintaining a connection with the town in which you grew up. It doesn't matter how big or small it was. But, it is what makes us who we are. Ms. Rozzelle makes us feel as though we are living through her experiences and it makes us want to remember our own. We live in a world now that takes things too much for granted. If you want to "go home again", then I would suggest that you read this wonderfully warm and love filled book.

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Tale of Dissappearance
Review: Ms. Rozzelle has assembled the voices of her past - family and friends - the parts of self that have made her who she is. The backdrop is Shuffletown, a dissappearing rural town in North Carolina. It is the dissappearance of this place that creates the contemplative tone that allows the reader to join Ms. Rozzelle in remembering what was, and what may still be. A wonderful reflection of how where we're from shapes who we become.

Rating:
Summary: Thanks for the Memories
Review: Shuffletown was a Southern rural community, dating from the mid-1800s, that fell prey to progress and developers, a town edged out of reality into the Neverland of memory. Fortunately, the memories have been saved thanks to author Judy Rozzelle, a Shuffletonian born and bred, who has compiled a verbal scrapbook of people and events, heavily tinged with Southern wit and eccentricity. To read this "multi-voice memoir" is to experience Southern hospitality at its finest--that hospitality that invites you up on the front porch, sits you down in a comfortable rocker with a tall glass of lemonade (or possibly something stronger) and invites you to listen as relatives and friends swap stories of marriages, murders, practical jokes and just plain crazy goin's on. One can't help but delight in the people, but the book has a deeper purpose than to merely entertain. As Rozzelle says, "Stories are the torch, the eternal flame we pass from one generation to the next. . . . Without giving constant voice to the past, we condemn those who lived here to an eternity of silence in a forgotten graveyard." Thanks to her, Shuffletown and its ghosts will never die.