"An important portrait of the interior West---the true stuff, raw and gritty, honest to the bone." - Craig Lesley, author of Burning Fence and Sky Fisherman

" . . . this unflinching and beautifully written memoir of place.  . . . Weston write[s] this poignant and affectionate memoir of place, showing clearly the gifts and perils at the heart of real people, real communities, real life."  Story Circle Reviews by Susan J. Tweit.

     THE GOOD TIMES ARE ALL GONE NOW: is a memoir of place, telling the stories of miners and Kellogg, Idaho in mid-20th century America. Deep mines, rich with lead and silver, high wages, gambling and brothels–these elements defined the company town for almost one hundred years from the 1880s to the 1980s.

      Julie Whitesel Weston joins stories of the townspeople, told to her over several years, with her own story of growing up there. The strands of community and mining history and her adolescence weave together against a background of the Cold War, post-McCarthyism and labor strife.

      Weston’s doctor father cared for the miners and the town loved him. At home, he drank and raged at his family. Weston struggled with this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, finding support from three men in her life: her ski instructor, her band leader and her boss, an attorney who worked to end the longest labor strike in the town’s history.

      The Good Times Are All Gone Now is a classic tale of the search by immigrants to America and from East to West for new homes, new jobs and new lives, told through the eyes of those who made the journey. It ends with a closed mine, a Superfund site, and the endurance of people used to hard times, and who reinvented their town not once, but twice.

Buy at your local bookstore or online at one of these locations:

University of Oklahoma Press
Indie Bound
Amazon
Barnes and Noble

      "Julie Weston's book could have been subtitled Growing Up in America:  The high school proms, the ski trips, the Jantzen sweaters, all against a background of poison from one of the most notorious mining operations in the world.  Weston's insights are unforgettable; her writing is wonderful."  - Mary Clearman Blew, author of All but the Waltz and Jackalope Dreams.

      "Mining the rich vein that lies between memory and history, Julie Whitesel Weston finds in her own story and that of Kellogg, Idaho, a true picture of the American West in the late twentieth century.  This is a book full of love and tragedy, told in beautiful, caring, heartbreaking language.  It's also a book full of disturbing questions for readers who connect the dots between mining, money and tourism."  John Rember, author of Traplines:  Coming Home to Sawtooth Valley.

      "What a generous gift Julie Weston offers us!  In showing us the lost world of an Idaho mountain mining town, she doesn't take sides, but reveals the life of Kellogg in all its horror and glory."  Carolyn See, author of Dreaming:  Hard Luck and Good Times in America