num_pages: 256
description: One of Americas most acclaimed writers deepens and expands his great literary saga set in small-town Kentucky spanning the Civil War to the present. For more than fifty years Wendell Berry has been telling us stories about Port William a mythical town on the banks of the Kentucky River populated over the years by a cast of unforgettable characters living in a single place over a long time. In A Place in Time  the stories dates range from 1864 when Rebecca Dawe finds herself in her own reflection at the end of the Civil War to one from 1991 when Grover Gibbs widow Beulah attends the auction as her home place is offered for sale. Written in a style as clean and distinctive as Hemingways and as perspicacious as Mark Twains ( Booklist  Starred Review) the twenty stories here deepen Berrys Port William saga one of the great works in American literature. This collection the tenth volume in the series is the perfect occasion to celebrate Berrys huge achievement. It feels as if the entire membershipall the Catletts Burley Coulter Elton Penn the Rowanberrys Laura Milby the preachers wife Kate Helen Branch Andys dog Mikenearly everyone returns with a story or two to fill in the gaps in this long tale. Those just now joining the Membership will be charmed. Those whove attended before will be enriched. [Berrys] poems novels and essays . . . are probably the most sustained contemporary articulation of Americas agrarian Jeffersonian ideal.  Publishers Weekly
language: English
title: A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership
publisher: Counterpoint