The Prize Winner Of Defiance, Ohio

How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less.

This book introduces Evelyn Ryan, an enterprising woman who kept poverty at bay with wit, poetry, and perfect prose during the "contest era" of the 1950s and 1960s.

Stepping back into a time when fledgling advertising agencies were active partners with consumers and everyday people saw possibility in every coupon, Terry Ryan tells how her mother kept the family afloat writing jingles and contest entries. Mom's winning ways defied the church, her alcoholic husband, and antiquated views of housewives. To her, flaunting convention was a small price to pay when it came to securing a happy home for her six sons and four daughters. Evelyn, who would surely be a Madison Avenue executive if working today, composed her jingles not in the boardroom but at the ironing board.

Entering contests on TV, radio, in newspapers, and through the mail, Evelyn Ryan won every appliance her family ever owned, not to mention cars, televisions, bicycles, watches, a jukebox, even trips to New York, Dallas and Switzerland. But it wasn't just the winning that was miraculous; it was the timing. If a toaster died, one was sure to arrive in the mail from a forgotten contest. Days after the bank called in the second mortgage on the house, a call came from the Dr Pepper Company: Evelyn was the grand prize winner of their national contest - and had won enough to pay the bank.

Graced with a rare appreciation for life's inherent hilarity, Evelyn turns every financial challenge into an opportunity for fun and profit. From the frenetic supermarket shopping spree worth $3,000 today, to the clever entries worthy of Erma Bombeck, Dorothy Parker, and Ogden Nash, 'The Prize Winner Of Defiance, Ohio' is about one woman whose talents reach far beyond her formidable verbal skills. Her irrepressible - and infectious - joy for living teaches that a winning spirit will always triumph over the poverty of circumstance.