This Land Was Made for You and Me:
The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie

By Elizabeth Partridge
Penguin, $21.99
ISBN 0670035351

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Remembering a great American poet

Mention Woody Guthrie, and the image that comes to mind is one straight out of The Grapes of Wrath: a bedraggled, Tom Joad-ish, rail-riding folk singer who tapped into the blood and bone of the American spirit. With This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie, a new biography for young people, author Elizabeth Partridge reminds readers that this is an incomplete picture of a timeless American poet. Balancing fine details with the broader elements of the Guthrie myth, Partridge has created a compelling biography that fleshes out the prevailing portrait of a legend.

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, in the summer of 1912, and named after the man who had just been nominated to run for president of the United States. If ever a boy was born to sing of life's troubles, it was Woody: the West was drying up, the Depression was approaching and his mother, suffering from an undiagnosed case of Huntington's Disease, was on a course to an insane asylum.

Guthrie's dysfunctional childhood, along with his genetic heritage, would have a drastic effect on his adult life. Readers will have to decide whether his brilliant and evocative songwriting was helped or hindered by a succession of broken marriages, tragic family deaths, alcohol abuse and the effects of Huntington's Disease, which he inherited from his mother.

As a history lesson, This Land Was Made for You and Me is wildly successful. Woody Guthrie's life was forged, it seems, on the crucible of the 20th century. He experienced the Dust Bowl and the Depression. He made the trek to California alongside thousands of other "Okies." He worked and fought with the nascent American labor movement as well as its Communist party. He served in the Merchant Marines in World War II and sang to frightened soldiers in the bellies of troop ships. At hootenannies, recording sessions and modern dance performances in Los Angeles and New York, he performed his unforgettable music. And he wrote about all of it.

This Land Was Made For You and Me is visually appealing as well as informative. A wealth of sepia-toned photographs complements Partridge's unblinking prose. She has also included drawings by the songwriter himself, along with excerpts from his personal letters, and material from original interviews with his children, Nora and Arlo.

Like the times in which he lived, Woody Guthrie was full of contradictions. Partridge's honest portrait of the quintessential American poet is both entertaining and enlightening. With This Land Was Made for You and Me, she has done readers young and old a service.