1KHO 846: The Stories That Make Us | Sheila Quinn, Where Flowers Once Grew

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Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich, I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And one of my favorite authors is back today, Sheila Quinn. Welcome back.

**Sheila Quinn** (1:13)
Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate so much what you do for authors and books and just in general reading and literacy. You are a champion for those of us who are in the book world. So thank you.

**Ginny Yurich** (1:27)
That's fun. That's the part I really love because reading it, it just enhances your life so much, you know, no matter what type of books you're reading for kids all the way through adults. And I think in an age that's heavy with screens, reading can be one of those things that mitigate some of the negative parts of that. And so obviously, we want there to be good books out in the world. And we talked last time about your book called So Long As It's Wonderful.
And I just loved it. I felt like I was a part of the story and the characters and the setting. And this book is based off of your own family. So I was wanting to kick it off, Sheila, by asking about if you think, okay, so you do this deep dive into your family tree, you're asking, you're having interviews. And this is within the last 100 years, you know, talking about Great Depression, Dust Bowl era.
Do you feel like in 100 years, someone's going to be able to write stories about us?

**Sheila Quinn** (2:23)
They'll be different because most of the stories I've collected are retellings from memories. And I think there will be, and not necessarily truer or more accurate, there will be written accounts, first-person accounts in little social media, and then the caption snippets.
And I don't know what that means.
But I think the process will be different because of how we document things now, where, you know, photographs were a rare treasure. And you only, you didn't know how the picture came out until you had the film developed. And now you might have 32 pictures of basically the same thing. And then you edit and then you crop. And I don't know. So yes, and it'll be different. I don't know.

**Ginny Yurich** (3:19)
It's just interesting because, yeah, there's that whole part that there's a glut of information. So how you sift through that. But then also you look at someone's life that grew up in something like the Dust Bowl. And it's so hands on and it's so, it's exciting in a good and bad way, right? Like when there's these dusters that you write about and these huge storms come through. Like it's exciting to read about.
Maybe not quite so, I mean, exciting to live, but also terrifying. So then you wonder about what's someone going to say? They sat in an air-conditioned office and it's just so different.

**Sheila Quinn** (3:58)
The version of what we're struggling with will be different. It's more maybe mental, psychological, not actually physical imminent danger in the way that they were experiencing 80, 100 years ago.

**Ginny Yurich** (4:14)
Yeah, so it just shows you how much life has changed in less than 100 years. It's very clear. So I wanted to read, before we kick it off, your new book came out. It came out in April and it is called Where Flowers Once Grew.
So it just came out and there are some reviews on Amazon that are so glowing. You'll learn about Chickens, Grace, Windmill Maintenance, Strength of Family, Depression Era, Household Economics. She tells the stories and the reader will learn. They put good fiction doesn't flirt with non-fictionist explaining. In this book, Sheila Quinn doesn't try to overexplain. You just learn from being a part of the story. So that was what one of the reviews was about. You're telling the story through the eyes of a 10-year-old girl. Then the next one, and here's another one, looking for a great read, grab a copy of Sheila Quinn's Where Flowers Once Grew. It is one of the best reads of 2026