A Little Boy in Utopia, Georgia

Phil Jones has long loved Utopia. 

It is the Berrien County community, just a short distance north of Nashville, that he, family and neighbors named Utopia back in the 1970s. Jones has long described himself as the unofficial mayor of the unincorporated neighborhood.

Now, he’s written a book about his childhood adventures and memories of the place where he grew up and lived.

“A Little Boy in Utopia, Georgia” tells the stories of a boy named Dan growing up in a rural Southern community in the 1960s and ’70s.

While the title and stories are about Utopia, readers who grew up in rural areas will recognize the terrain spelled out in Jones’ book. Readers who grew up in rural areas in the 1960s and ’70s will especially identify with the nostalgic tug of their own memories of bike rides, sweltering back seats on long road trips, visits to country stores, the squeaking clatter of screen porch doors and so many other touchstones.

For these folks, reading “Utopia” is like smelling hot plastic on a sunny summer afternoon, it whisks the mind back to childhood memories of backyard splashing in inflatable pools and garden hoses gurgling water. Jones’ words will transport some readers back to their own childhoods and their own personal utopias.

Jones admits in the book’s epilogue that Dan and his boyhood adventures are based on him and his childhood. 

“A Little Boy in Utopia, Georgia” is a personal memoir that tells the story of a boy and his community from the perspective of a man looking back but one that should have a ripple effect on older readers who will reflect on their own memories and childhoods.