A clear-eyed memoir of a golden time that lightened the years ahead.
The inaugural title in the nonprofit publisher’s Woodford Reserve Series in Kentucky Literature, Watson’s debut perfectly recalls the summer when a black foreman taught her how to set tobacco plants, chew the best dried leaf, and survive the sudden squalls that roiled her otherwise loving family.
The author nicely describes Grassy Spring Farm, where her kin raised horses, cattle, and some of the best tobacco in the world. The family had cultivated this land since the Civil War, and though Watson’s father was a doctor with a practice in town, he was also a farmer. Grassy Spring defined her childhood: “I did not want to separate myself from it and I grieved for my time there long before it was gone.” Though Watson moves back and forth in time to recall changes in her own life and the farm, the heart of her story concerns the summer she turned seven, in 1942. Always close to farm foreman Joe Collins, the girl became his helper and dreamed of being a farmer like him. She rode the tobacco setter with Joe, looked for guinea-hen feathers for his hat, ate lunch with him by the well. On the surface it seemed an earthly paradise peopled with agreeably eccentric relatives, a laundress who sang to the spirits, and a grocer called Ocean Frog, but there were intimations of lurking instability and tragedy. Watson’s beautiful mother, Sally Gay, grew flowers to find serenity; her father could be the best of companions, but he often became dangerously irascible, threatening everyone by pointing a gun that Joe had to wrestle away. Other dark moments would come, but memories of that transcendent summer endure.
A clear-eyed memoir of a golden time that lightened the years ahead.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2004
ISBN: 1-932511-08-3
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Sarabande
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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