Growing Up Tough

by Roderick Saxey

It wasn't easy being a young boy in Price, Utah, during the tumultuous 1920s and 1930s, not with the name of Shirley Edwin and a birthday on April Fool's Day, not when your best friends were immigrants and the KKK hated them and you, and not when one disaster after another tore at your family and town. Read how little Eddie dealt with the challenges of his early exposure to the realities of death, political conflict, labor strife, and ethnic prejudice. His experiences with family and friends taught him the importance of love, faith, honesty, and acting promptly on impulses to do good. The result is a heart-warming story of love, loyalty, and learning.

Growing Up Tough takes place in a town still in transition between the old west and the modern world. We are in a similar period of transition, and the lessons learned then can be applied to our time, dealing with personal character and relationships, assimilating immigrants, and reconciling political and cultural differences between people

293 pages, Paperback

Published October 19, 2023

About the author

Roderick Saxey is a semi-retired physician living in eastern Washington. His background includes service as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, degrees from Brigham Young University and George Washington University Medical School, 12 years in the United States Air Force, and many years’ service in various medical practices and callings in the Church. He and his wife, Lisa, have six children and 10 grandchildren.

Books currently available at Amazon include:

THE TRILLIUM GIRL (novel for youth)

TURNING THE HEARTS: Counsel for my Distant Descendants

ALL ENLISTED: A Mormon Missionary in Austria During the Vietnam Era

THE FEDERALIST: Excerpts with Commentary