When Vallie Fletcher Taylor, a middle school teacher, decided to bring Texas history to life in her classroom by focusing on people and human stories instead of dates and issues, she laid the foundation for her own moving memoir, Eyes in the Alley: Memories of San Antonio and the Great Depression. This book is not only chockfull of the details of the 30s as seen through Taylor's eyes, it is also peppered with photographs of her and her family.

The book is divided into thirteen chapters and Taylor, who was born in 1932, relies heavily on her own memories of each topic. Once those are spent, she does research in order to fill in the gaps in her recounting. Taylor writes about what she did as a child for fun, discusses strange medical ideas of the time, drifts into her first instruction about womanhood and sexuality, recalls the fashions of the period, and dips into education, racism, WWII, strong Texas women, and psychic intuition. Sometimes, these topics are dealt with in essay form. At other times, Fletcher recounts an incident in story form that really brings to life the topic she's discussing.

Eyes in the Alley: Memories of San Antonio and the Great Depression is honest. Her mother, Sallie Aleen Haynes Fletcher, who abhorred liars, would be very proud of Fletcher's courage to write the truth in a way that reflected the era but was not hurtful. The book fills a gap that historians have struggled with because it shows another side to the Depression. It is not a book about displaced Okies trekking to California to find work, nor is it about the gaunt faces of men standing in bread lines in New York or any of the other larger cities in the East. It brings to life an ordinary family, perhaps a slightly more prosperous one than average, in the middle of the country and how they coped with one of the most trying times in this country. More than anything else, Eyes in the Alley: Memories of San Antonio and the Great Depression is a portrait of a vivacious child who grew into one of those strong Texas women she so eagerly wrote about. Very highly recommended.