I finally finished reading this. Up front, I will say I am giving it two stars not because it is bad, but because it is, well, "just ok," which is what two stars means here on GoodReads. The book did have some interesting moments. It showed some good human interest stories. However, after a while, the book does get a bit tedious and boring much like a small town can get boring after a while. It is amazing that the author got as much access as she did and that the people of Utopia were are open with her as they were.

The book does reveal the good and the bad of living in a small town. For me, the ingrained bigotry and racism, even if seen under the "it's the way things are around here," was a big turn off. It is the 21st century: learn the fact that the n-word is not an acceptable word for polite company. In many ways, the town can be seen as a time capsule from times past. That is what drove the author to write about it. But change is coming, and the residents resist with varying degrees of success.

The story of the mother with three sons who are soldiers is specially moving. The soldier boys do serve to make some members of the military seem a bit more human, but you also wonder about some of these kids who see no other options when it comes to leaving the town other than joining the military.

By the way, this is NOT Andy Griffith's Mayberry. They have their virtues and some good values, which do them credit. But there are some ugly traits in the town as well. I thought the author overall was fairly balanced in her presentation. Still, I think for many people, this book will likely persuade them to stay away from living in a small town (or any other community with a similar dynamic). After all, it is a place where, for good or bad, everyone knows everyone else's business.

Books with similar appeal for readers:

Friday Night Lights, which is much more interesting than this, and also takes places in a small Texas town.

Deer Hunting with Jesus. ( )

I've spent a lot of time in the actual town of Utopia back in the late 90's, & though I'm an "outsider," city slicker, I got to know some of the people there well enough to say that she really captures the spirit of the place. It's by turns desolate & beautiful country, depending on how near you are to water, the hilltops surrounding the Sabinal valley are truly paradisaical. I can understand why people choose to stay, despite the economic hardships of living in such a place. ( )

Karen Valby is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly and was given the assignment to find a town that has remained untouched by today's pop culture. She found the tiny town of Utopia, Texas, nestled snugly in the Texas Hill Country about 2 hours away from San Antonio. The population is a few hundred and the town has no stoplights, one constable, six real estate offices and seven churches. There are no fast food restaurants, no movie theaters and no chain stores. These are ranching people who raise goats, cattle, deer and children who swear they cannot wait to graduate to leave the dusty Main street of Utopia behind. Many never do leave as they follow their parents into working the family ranches. Valby focused her book on four individuals from Utopia: Ralph, the retired owner of the general store; Kathy, the mother of 4 sons, 3 of whom were in the Army and serving in war zones; Colter, a 22-year-old with big dreams but zero ambition; and Kelli, a high school student with a passion for music and one of a very few black people in Utopia.

Ralph still goes to the general store every morning, although he sold it to Milton several years ago. There he meets with the "coffee drinkers" who sit around the large coffee urn and discuss the world and its problems. These old-timers are the most adamant about keeping modern culture from Utopia's city limits, voting to keep their town 'dry' and opposing the installation of sidewalks. They are redneck racists although they do see themselves as such. Kathy worries constantly about her boys in the Army and when she does get the dreaded visit from the officers in their dress greens telling her that oldest son Jeff was killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, her world collapses. Wanting to keep her other three boys close to home but wanting them to have lives rich with experiences they will never have in Utopia causes Kathy enormous contradictory emotions. Colter cares nothing for ranching and spends all of his time playing video games, surfing the internet or traveling the 50 minute drive to the nearest movies theater. His best friend is thriving at Yale and Colter makes vague allusions to maybe going to college for computers but his lack of ambition keeps him in Utopia in dead-end jobs. Kelli, despite a shaky beginning when she moved to the tiny town, has become a popular student (one of only 4 senior girls) and works hard to perfect her guitar skills hoping to move to Austin and join the indie music scene.

I found this book very interesting in that any town can be so untouched by today's culture. Things have changed somewhat in Utopia - Milton changed the front of the general store from brick to wood and he sells soy milk. The coffee drinkers want to know how you milk a soybean.
( )

WELCOME TO UTOPIA is a biography of Utopia, Texas. With a population of 227 people in 2010, A small town with a population of fewer than 2000 people, it is isolated in the Texas Hill Country about 90 miles northwest of San Antonio. There are very few outlets for entertainment within a sixty mile radius. The closest movie theater is sixty miles away. There are no book stores or music stores. But the internet is beginning to have an effect.
Most of the residents are descendants of families that have lived there for generations. They know each other well and, as Karen Valby points out, “But for all the grudges people in a small town are capable of holding, rare is the public confrontation. To get byin such a cramped community, people put on civil faces and politely nod hello to one another....A town like Utopia is too small to accommodate open hostility for very long.”
The book focuses of four residents: Ralph, the owner of the general store which is a major hangout for older residents, Kathy, a waitress in the main restaurant whose sons are serving in the military, Colter, a high school senior trying to figure out what to do with his life, and Kelli, another high school senior who is part of the only black family in town.
Much if the book discusses about the futures of the children: Will they stay in Utopia or move away? Will they go to college?
One loved character suffers from seizures after being treated for cancer. The description of the petit mal flashbacks is very accurate.
The book mentions some differences in attitude between residents of Utopia and the tourists, many of them Yankees. Hunting is one of them. “The problem the men had with so many of these weekend hunters was their lack of respect. They figured a man ought to eat what he killed.” One character notes that ninety percent of the deer killed “never hit the table.”
The book ends with the election of Barack Obama as President, how some of the people deal with his race, and how they think the government should work.
The book is a gentle, portrayal of a tight community living with its past and trying to prepare for its future.
After reading WELCOME TO UTOPIA, I read some information about the town on-line. One thing that was very prominent on-line but omitted from the book was the beauty of the area. While Karen Valby does refer to tourists, it’s a shame that did not write more about that. It would have added some insight as to why some people chose to continue to live there and why other people chose to move there. ( )

The author spent what must have been most of a year stying with the small town of Utopia to learn its characters. The resut seems to be a pretty realistic insight into the daily lives of the people who live there.

This place is close to where I live and have grown up and I think the place was accurately reported, although I did not know the actualindividuals she wrote about.

This is a very good look into small-town Texas ife in my opinion. ( )