Product Description

Some 30 years ago, the author of Eighty Acres and his wife discovered an abandoned 18th-century farmhouse that later became their home. This collection of rich, lively portraits explores the links between a rural New England landscape and the routines of its inhabitants, now and in the past, and celebrates the age-old process of taking what's old and making it new.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1725434 in Books
• Published on: 1996-11-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 263 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Beyond the abandoned farmhouse, the road petered into woods-just the place the author and his wife, Grace, were seeking. As they reclaimed the 200-year-old house in Washington, N.H., they felt a continuity with previous owners who had lived and farmed there. Here Jager (Eighty Acres: Elegy for a Family Farm) explores the landscape and the New England rural past. He restores the original hearthstone of his house, which was removed during late-19th century "improvements." He moves from past to present, with portraits of daily life in the town-a church fair, town meeting, presidential primary, deer hunting-and captures the essence of New England small-town life. Some chapters were originally published in Harper's, the New York Times, Country Life and other journals.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Jager (Eighty Acres, Beacon, 1992) and his wife dreamed of finding an abandoned house and bringing it back to life. They found the answer to that dream in a late 18th-century farm house located at the "end of the road" in Washington, New Hampshire. When the Jagers purchased it in the 1960s, they became only the third family to reside there. Jager, a former professor of philosophy at Yale, writes about the history of the house and his growing feelings of connection with its past residents, the surrounding woods, and the citizens of Washington over the last 25 years. His philosophy background and interest in history is evident in his musings about such things as the original well in the house's cellar, the role of democracy in Washington's annual town meetings, and the relationship between humans and nature as reflected in his experiences with the house and surrounding countryside. A thoughtful book for general readers.
Linda McEwan, Elgin Community Coll., Ill.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In an increasingly popular essay formula, the writer places a particular thing in its contexts. In Verlyn Klinkenborg's most impressive The Last Fine Time (1992), all themes converged upon Klinkenborg's father-in-law's home in Buffalo, New York. For Jager, the convergence point is a "farmhouse, parked in the middle of a hundred acres, more or less, of retired farmland" in New Hampshire that he and his wife bought 30 years ago. Jager's scope is less ambitious than Klinkenborg's but by no means meager. He relays a great deal about American history; about New England, its differences from the Midwest, and its ecology, institutions (e.g., church fairs), architectural styles and construction techniques, and local politics; about desperately lost motorists; about the families who lived in the 200-year-old house; and about the topics of New England conversation. His book may not be as evocative as Klinkenborg's, yet Jager tells us exactly as much about the minutiae of his house as we want to know--indeed, much more than we might have thought we wanted to know before we picked up the book. He succeeds at encouraging us to believe that our own dwellings are as fascinating as the last house on the road. Roland Wulbert

Customer Reviews

Mr. Jager perfectly captures the rhythm of this small town.
Ron Jager has used his considerable store of dry wit and keen sense of observation to create a book that wonderfully portrays life in a small New Hampshire town. His book is consistently entertaining, whether meditating on nature as observed near his pond or contemplating the ups and downs of life in a town that still practices the most basic form of participatory democracy - the annual town meeting. Mr. Jagers rural life does not begin in New Hampshire however. He also gives us glimpses of his own boyhood in the midwest; a background that makes him uniquely qualified to write about rural life in a very different part of the United States. Clearly the people that appear in this book are not just subjects but neighbors and friends and his affection for them and for his "last house on the road" come shining through.