"Marking the 50th anniversary of the albums release, John Prine offers a chronicle of the singer-songwriter s roots in Middle America, a soulful framework filled with rich imagery and unique perspectives. John Prine s time in Chicago is often regarded as a footnote in his larger biography, which discounts its deep and lasting influence. Through a series of original interviews, exhaustive research and personal insight, author Erin Osmon, for the first time, paints an in-depth portrait of Prine s beginnings in the Chicago folk music scene, and the history and impact of his childhood in Western Kentucky and suburban Maywood, Illinois. An adopted daughter of Chicago, with a similar family lineage in Western Kentucky, Osmon s perspective as a rural soul in the big city closely mirrors Prine s own provenance. She takes readers on a journey through the city s neighborhoods, characters and clubs of the 1960s and 70s, a formative and magical period in Prine s life, before he was a figurehead of the Nashville scene. It s a love letter to Prine s self-titled debut, and to John Prine s Chicago, which incubated the burgeoning songwriter in its outsider s embrace."--