Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership
    Unavailable
    A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership
    Unavailable
    A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership
    Ebook349 pages5 hours

    A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership

    By Wendell Berry

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    One of America’s 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 H—emingway’s” and “as perspicacious as Mark Twain’s” (Booklist, Starred Review), the twenty stories here deepen Berry’s 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 Berry’s huge achievement. It feels as if the entire membership—all the Catletts, Burley Coulter, Elton Penn, the Rowanberrys, Laura Milby, the preacher’s wife, Kate Helen Branch, Andy’s dog, Mike—nearly 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 who’ve attended before will be enriched.
     
    “[Berry’s] poems, novels and essays . . . are probably the most sustained contemporary articulation of America’s agrarian, Jeffersonian ideal.” —Publishers Weekly
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 1, 2012
    ISBN9781619021310

    Read more from Wendell Berry

    Related to A Place in Time

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Book Club

      Aug 7, 2019

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Dreyer, Lapidos, Winters, and More

      Jan 22, 2019

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from the likes of Benjamin Dreyer, Juliet Lapidos, Ben Winters and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to h

      5 min read

    • Article

      Hogwash!

      May 17, 2021

      Hogwash!
      3 min read

    • Article

      Finding Facts In Fiction

      Mar 12, 2021

      Finding Facts In Fiction
      10 min read

    • Article

      Hogwash!

      May 17, 2021

      Hogwash!
      3 min read

    • Article

      Your LETTERS

      Nov 12, 2021

      Your LETTERS
      7 min read

    • Article

      They Were One-offs

      Apr 6, 2022

      HOW I wish I’d written this book! Matthew Kelly celebrates four women whose work created the organisations and attitudes to conservation we take for granted today. Two are well known, two are not; all their stories enrich us. The well-known two are O

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Loading Brush

      Sep 1, 2017

      The Art of Loading Brush
      27 min read

    • Article

      Ricko’s Not-so-modern Life

      Dec 11, 2018

      Ricko DeWilde steps off of a small wooden boat on the Nenana River and onto dry land. The steep, muddy ridge he must ascend to continue our goose hunt is too tall for him to see over the top, but it’s not too tall to climb. He eyes it warily. “I don’

      8 min read

    • Article

      Deadwood’s Open Secret

      Nov 21, 2023

      Deadwood’s Open Secret
      8 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Jun 21, 2023

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Poor View

      Aug 15, 2019

      A Poor View
      10 min read

    • Article

      Refuge

      May 2, 2017

      Refuge
      7 min read

    • Article

      Southern Stand

      Mar 16, 2020

      Southern Stand
      5 min read

    • Article

      Icons

      Apr 14, 2023

      Icons
      10 min read

    • Article

      Icons

      Apr 15, 2023

      Icons
      10 min read

    • Article

      Previews

      Jan 12, 2020

      Previews
      3 min read

    • Article

      Joan Didion’s Blues

      Dec 1, 2018

      Joan Didion’s Blues
      12 min read

    • Article

      A Visit To The Border

      Nov 19, 2018

      A Visit To The Border
      7 min read

    • Article

      Free To Be You And Me

      May 3, 2019

      Free To Be You And Me
      10 min read

    • Article

      Not Everything Turns to Gold

      Oct 2, 2018

      Theodore Roosevelt once said, “When I am in California, I am not in the West, I am west of the West.” The Rough Rider’s koan has been widely viewed as a celebration of the limitless California adventure, but it’s also a reminder of the dizzying, vert

      4 min read

    • Article

      Quotients

      May 7, 2020

      Quotients
      8 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Oct 24, 2022

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      The 10 Best Books Of February Reckon With The Past – And Present

      Feb 27, 2024

      Float Up, Sing Down, by Laird Hunt In Laird Hunt’s collection of stories, residents of an Indiana farming community in 1982 go about their routines, with secrets and regrets roiling beneath the surface. “Things grew where they grew and flew where the

      2 min read

    Reviews for A Place in Time

    4/5

    27 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Wendell Berry has been writing poetry and essays on farming life for more than half a century. But he has also written fiction set in Port William, Ky., which rivals William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County in terms of its breadth of imagined historical detail. A Place in Time includes 20 stories that feature familiar characters from earlier novels and stories, but it is not necessary to have read those to get pleasure out of these. This is a good introduction to many of the families that inhabit Port William. The Catletts and Feltners are prominent in several stories. While individual characters like Burley Coulter, Elton Penn, and Andy Catlett stand out. The stories span more than a century and a half of history from the opening story, set in the Civil War era to the titular tale that ends the book during the first decade of the new millennium.The stories are not plot driven but focus on character, including the character of Port William itself. The relationships of characters are as important as their actions in these beautiful vignettes of small town life. As someone who was raised in a small town I found moments that resonated with my own experience. "Andy Catlett: Early Education" reminded me of my own schooldays while also bringing my reading of books like Tom Sawyer to mind. One of the most potent stories, for instance, is markedly subtle: “A Desirable Woman” tracks the intersection of a pastor’s wife and a young farmhand shortly before the start of World War II, and the story turns on the young man’s unrequited crush on the woman shortly before he’s sent off to war. “Sold” has a similarly soft-focus, nostalgic cast, narrated by an elderly woman recalling the accumulations that are about to be sold at auction before she enters a nursing home. Some of the stories are suggestive of homespun tales or Twain (again), as in “A New Day,” which climaxes in a competition between two horse teams dragging bricks, or “A Burden,” about the antics of a drunk relation.Throughout the collection Berry's writing style is poetic as he shares episodes of loss and love, achievement and angst; all set against the backdrop of the evolution of Port William through time. The historic context was omnipresent but not overwhelming. It intruded with tales of soldiers returning or not returning from war and notes of other events, although the focus was continually on the families -- their follies, their foibles, and their faith. Berry is a writer whose beautiful sentences are imbued with an agrarian spirit. That and a concern for both time past and time future make this a fine collection.
    • 4/5
      I've read jayber Crow,Hannah Coulter and the Andy Catlett books in the Port William series. Each of these abt an indiviudal living in Port William and the townpeople they reside among. This particular book, A PLACE IN TIME is 20 short stories about different people in town.It was nice to fill in the gaps or see a conclusion or continuation of characters. Love Berry's writing.This book is good on its own,but might be a better compliment after reading some of his other Port William series.
    • 3/5
      This book is my introduction to Wendell Berry's Port William world and,while I also deeply mourn the loss of all that was good, it's hard to understand why people didn't help each other more,like taking care of Old Jack in his log cabin...?