COUNTRY CHRONICLE

A disarming account of twenty years living on an upper New York state farm, by one who preferred city to country, but who learned the values of country life. Prodded, urged, and forced by his wife to give up urban existence, defying everything about the country, except the hunting, the author learns how to acquire electricity, roofing, why trees should be planted, the ways of bulls, the eccentricities of his neighbors....and from a life of a recluse, his income dwindles and he becomes Postmaster and as such is-obliged to identify himself with his neighbors. With more time he began to drop the deadly date line of the pulps and to write more leisurely novels. This is the pattern of the changes the years brought -- of how the once prosperous town became a ghost town -- of cars and radio and government interference, of disappearing farms, of move towards the town....And against this -- city man into countryman, in straightforward, ingratiating incidentalia....A refreshing change in viewpoint.