My Life as a Mule – A Review by J. Geoffrey Jones

I’ve been reading a book by a writer with the elegant name Sj Hylton LeHoven. The content of her book, as well as some of her other writings I’ve seen, make me feel a bit the way *Emerson must have felt when he wrote the letter Walt Whitman quoted on the back of the first edition of Leaves of Grass. It’s a great pleasure to be able to help in any way possible to bring good literature to its audience.

I’m finding My life as A Mule to be a remarkable group of stories. The writing concept is, by turns, reminiscent of Charlotte’s Web, Aesop’s Fables, and Alice in Wonderland. It uses talking animals to tell human truths just as the above classics do. Through her human spirited characters she tells the story of the passage from childhood to adulthood of her main character, Molly, with many seemingly simple but actually much deeper insights. Young people will enjoy this book but adults will as well. It is well illustrated with drawings by Jocelyne C. Shiner.

A lot of the writing, it appears, was scoped out during the bravely ambitious traveling Sj has been doing in her custom camper ( ala John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley or Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with A Donkey). She considers herself “Riding the Trust Train,” a rare wording in these times. Her adventurous inquisitiveness has paid off both in new friendships as well as new self-realizations.

I am glad she found a copy of The Reader as she passed through Murfreesboro (Tennessee) and wrote mehttp://www.rutherfordreader.com/ an enthusiastic note at the time. ( I had just published an article about the full solar eclipse that week) From then on I followed up on her Odyssey. Which has led me to this book. I’m glad to have learned of Sj’s creative journey. And to share the news with you. Find a copy of this well written group of stories. You’ll be glad you did. J. Geoffrey Jones, The Rutherford Reader ld_byron37086@yahoo.com

Published June 28, 2018 in The Rutherford Reader.

My Life as a Mule is available at Amazon. Click on the title for the link to purchase your own copy. : )

*Curious about the story about Whitman and Emerson? Click here to learn more. And click here to read Whitman’s letter dated August 1656.