In the newest novel in the Port William series, Wendell Berry's beloved protagonist Andy Catlett tells the inspiring story of his grandfather Marce Catlett to his own children and grandchildren, and gives them a key to their place on the questionably settled land they all love
Andy Catlett's story begins as his grandfather Marce Catlett rises in the dark to travel from his farm by horseback and train to Louisville for the auction of his 1906 tobacco crop. The price paid for each year's crop has been depressed to virtually nothing by the power of a single buyer, James B. Duke. This year is especially grim since the price offered to each grower is less than the expense of bringing the crop to market. A year's labor is lost.
Marce returns to his family defeated, defiant, and determined to grow another crop. Many of his fellow farmers at first seem to lack the resiliency and resourcefulness to continue. Only with the cooperation of other growers can a way be found that protects these farmers and keeps their rural families vital and in place.
The power and depth of this story--and of the many stories within the history of the Port William Membership--resonate with love, kindness, and the held memory of family and community. In Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story, celebrated author Wendell Berry brings to life a tale that devoted readers of the series will cherish. This moving novel is a testament to the goodwill that lives within the human heart and a stirring reminder that standing up for what we believe in is always a cause worth fighting for.
"Love and duty are the animating agents of Mr. Berry's tremendous body of writing, which includes poetry, essays and the linked novels and short stories that are colloquially known as the Port William series . . . Mr. Berry captures a range of the human comedy in his provincial setting . . . His writing conjures the connectedness and simple moral clarity that the people of Port William imperfectly aspire to. And while Marce Catlett is in many ways a lament for an 'oldfangled' lifestyle that now persists only in stories, it arrives at another of this author's favorite words. That is 'thanks'--'for life continuing on the earth, and for the earth continuing alive.' Gratitude seems like an appropriate response to this short and heartfelt work, which further develops a vision of Americanness that eschews the familiar values of progress, mobility and power. Mr. Berry's fictional world is flawed, hard and deeply cherishable." --Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
"Berry makes the case of all who have told stories from the beginning of humankind--all our lives are stories, bound up in stories and passed on as stories . . . This book's story is so real and well told that it enters the soul and spurs our own storytelling, which itself is the core of human community." --Shmuel Klatzkin, The American Spectator
"Readers, new or longstanding, will be grateful to have read Marce Catlett, and will appreciate it as a conduit once more for Berry's important perspective and critique on our belonging to community and land. The book deeply implores us to acknowledge the stories that we ourselves live into and that shape our understanding of the world around us. Whether familial, biblical or fictional, we are all shaped by stories, and Berry reminds us through his that tending to them is important work." --Chris Taylor, The Presbyterian Outlook
Wendell Berry is the author of fifty books of poetry, fiction, and essays. He was recently awarded the Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the Louis Bromfield Society Award. For over forty years he has lived and farmed with his wife, Tanya, in Kentucky.