“These vivid New Hampshire farm sketches from Hall's well-spent youth—all written when he was full-grown—are as much attuned to the supple and enticing utilities of language as they are grounded in a vanished time which may, at a glimpse, seem simple, but were complex and rich and not simple at all.”—Richard Ford

This is a collection of story-essays diverse in subject but united by the limitless affection the author holds for the land and the people of New England. Donald Hall tells about life on a small farm where, as a boy, he spent summers with his grandparents. Gradually the boy grows to be a young man, sees his grandparents aging, the farm become marginal, and finally, the cows sold and the barn abandoned. But these are more than nostalgic memories, for in the measured and tender prose of each episode are signs of the end of things: a childhood, perhaps a culture.

In an Epilogue written for this edition, Donald Hall describes his return to the farm twenty-five years later, to live the rest of his life in the house that held a box of string too short to be saved.