What other great works of literature served as inspiration for "Brandy You're A Fine Girl"? Well, in this excerpt, we seem to channel "Little House On The Prairie":
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Brandy’s formal education was typical for a girl of that day.
The schoolhouse itself was a simple affair. One room; all the children of all ages together. It was simple, but brand new. A few years ago, the original school house had burned to the ground in a fire of mysterious origin. The community tried to rally to raise funds to replace the structure, but the resources weren’t available. Only when the mayor—who happened to be the town’s wealthiest citizen—contributed the bulk of the necessary funds was the project completed.
Writing and arithmetic were done with chalk on bare slates that were passed from one student to the next. The older students checked the progress of the younger students. The teacher pretty much kept order all around.
There were no grades, no tests, no homework; each student learned at whatever pace was most comfortable to him or her.
There was no baccalaureate, no graduation. Whenever one thought that enough had been learned, one simply stopped attending. It was a mutual decision between the student and the parents.
In Brandy’s case, she was older than thirteen—not yet sixteen—when she and her mother agreed that she’d had enough of reading and writing to suffice the rest of her life. So Brandy helped even more with the laundry and the ironing and the mending and the gardening. She had resigned to a life filled with other people’s clothes. And she knew she would never earn enough coins to buy those fine clothes for herself.
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"Brandy You're A Fine Girl", a novel written by Joe DeShon and inspired by the 1972 hit song by Looking Glass, will be published in April.
#BrandyBook

People ask me about the inspiration for my writing. Beyond the obvious (a 1972 hit song about a lovely barmaid named Brandy), much of the inspiration for the narrative of the novel comes from Charles Dickens, specifically, “A Christmas Carol”. Read the first few paragraphs and notice how the narrator argues with himself about the possibility that a doornail can actually be “dead”. That was an inspiration for much of the narrative in “Brandy You’re A Fine Girl.”

The other source of inspiration came from Garrison Keillor. His description of the Lake Wobegon women gathering in the basement of the Lutheran Church with their covered dishes inspired much of descriptions of the town folk in the setting for Brandy.

I don’t claim to be as good a writer as either Dickens or Keillor. But I hope when you read my book, you’ll see me channeling their creativity.

“Brandy You’re A Fine Girl”, a novel written by Joe DeShon and inspired by the 1972 hit song by Looking Glass, will be available in paperback, Kindle, and Audible formats in Spring, 2019. #BrandyBook