Watch with Me
Lumbering, likable, easygoing Kentucky farmer Ptolemy ("Tol") Proudfoot, who weighs around 300 pounds, might at first seem an unlikely match for dainty, neat, tiny, prim schoolteacher Minnie Quinch, but their marriage in 1908, after a courtship begun at a cake auction, thrives through mutual adjustments, small discoveries and abiding love. Berry ( What Are People For? ), noted essayist, poet, novelist and Kentucky farmer, infuses these seven quietly moving stories--set in Port William, Ky., the small town that Berry has visited so often before in his fiction--with sly humor. Their deceptively simple plots, following the couple for 33 years, deal with Minnie's sole whiskey binge, the Proudfoots' disastrous ride to a state fair in their new Model A coupe, the town misfit's apparent suicide threat and so forth. With the simplicity of folk tales, these stories beautifully evoke a world where people live in relatively harmony with nature, the land and community, and where neighborliness and human scale still matter.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.