BOTW: two beloved villages

A while back I decided it was time to revisit Port William, Kentucky, by reading or rereading the several volumes of Wendell Berry's stories I acquired many years ago.*  It was part of a resolve to read what was already on my shelves rather than adding more.

Almost three years after that grand declaration I've finally finished A Place On Earth, Berry's 1993 revision of the 1967 edition.  

 A Place on Earth is set in the spring of 1945, a pivotal time for the larger world and for the small Kentucky community.  Virgil Feltner is missing in action in Europe and that not-knowing affects every moment of Mat Feltner's days. But life goes on for Mat and the Port William Fellowship -- Uncle Jack Beechum, Burley Coulter, Jayber Crow, and a host of others.    Tragedy, comedy, hard decisions, new life, and hope -- all told with Wendell Berry's characteristic grace and style.  

P.S. I went to Alibris and ordered all of the Port William books I didn't have. So the bookshelves get even fuller.

*I read Hannah Coulter in 2019 and The Wild Birds in April of this year .  A Place on Earth precedes both of these.  Episodes in A Place on Earth are more fully developed in the later books. 

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 I came upon this well-used ex-library copy of Tyler's Row at the church rummage sale. Just twenty-five cents. How could I resist? It was as charming as when I first read it years and years ago.  

Peter and Diana Hale are looking for a country retreat and see great potential in the eighteenth-century Tyler's Row, a three-dwelling row house in the village of Fairacre.  The elderly tenants in the two end units have been at odds for years and Peter and Diana must put up with their feuding while they remodel the center unit for themselves.   Meanwhile Miss Read, the omniscient narrator, deals with small and large events at her school and in the village. 

You can read more about Dora Jessie Saint (1913-2012), aka Miss Read, here.   Her books depict a gentler time (even 1972, when Tyler's Row was published), filtered through a lens of nostalgia.  

(How did a book from Punta Gorda get to Zion?)

  

Left:  Miss Read and her housekeeper have a discussion.

Even before I opened Tyler's Row I recalled  J. S. Goodall illustrations.