Planting by the Moon: On Life in a Mountain Hamlet

Planting by the Moon provides a rollicking yet poignant portrait of rural hardscrabble America. Stillman's perspective on life in a backwater hamlet, as caught in essays and occasional poems, is refreshingly different from other books on rural life. He is the things he writes of-logger, firefighter, horseman, cabin dweller, loiterer at the general store. These writings bring us past romanticized depictions of rural village life to provide a close up view of the ongoing struggle for survival in such a place, as well as of the exquisite beauty of Stillman's chosen world.

Readers will meet Rooney, who kept a car in the kitchen, Wanda, who painted her rival's name on a pig, Everett, who had fits tailored to the moment, Jimmy, who logged by moonlight, Earl, whose wife ran off in the family car "after he'd just done the valves and rings," and many more of Gilead's memorable inhabitants. Together these pieces, most from letters and journals, are the very kind of "place" literature people of all ages should not only be reading but creating for themselves.