Stand By Me

As in thought he passes backward into time, the country becomes quieter, and it seems to grow larger. The sounds of engines become less frequent and farther apart until they cease altogether.

This is the country of his own life and history, fragmentary as they necessarily have been.

On a clear Kentucky night in 1888, a young woman risks her life to save a stranger from a drunken mob. Almost a hundred years later, her great-grandson Andy climbs a hill at the edge of town, and is flooded with memories of all he has lived, seen and heard of the past century– of farmers wooing schoolteachers, soldiers trudging home from war; of the first motor car, the Great Depression, and Vietnam; of hunting, good whisky, and benign kidnappings; of neighbourly feuds and family secrets; of grief and betrayal-and of forgiveness, devotion and great friendship that endures for generations.

These are Wendell Berry’s tales of Port William, a little farming community nestled deep in the Kentucky River valley. They unravel the story of a town over the course of four generations, lovingly chronicling the intertwined lives of the families who call it home.

Affectionate, elegiac and wry, these uplifting rural fables invite us to witness the beauty and quiet heroism at the heart of each ordinary, interconnected life.