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.
WENDELL BERRY, an essayist, novelist, and poet, has been honored with the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the John Hay Award of the Orion Society, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, among other distinctions. In 2010, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama, and in 2016, he was the recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle. Berry lives with his wife, Tanya Berry, on their farm in Henry County, Kentucky.
"Now over 90 years old, Berry seems to have embedded in his latest novel, Marce Catlett, a kind of last word for his readers—a goodbye from Port William to us . . . [But] at the end of Marce Catlett, I realized this is not the end of Port William. All its stories still exist. There’s a reason Mr. Berry took us backward and forward in the timeline. He was teaching us how to love a people and a place, if only in our imagination, and those stories are still there." —Russell Moore, Christianity Today
"Vintage Berry, elegiac and elegant, with a profound sense of all that has been lost." —Kirkus Reviews
"Wendell Berry has never hidden behind his stories; the land and people of Port William, Ky., have always been his land and his people. This truth is perhaps never more obvious than in Marce Catlett . . . Wendell Berry returns to his beloved Port William, offering a kind of benediction full of longing for a former life threaded with wonder at its beauty and its humble persistence." —Shelf Awareness
"Berry explores the heritage of Andy Catlett, protagonist of his Port William stories and novels in this wistful tale of the steady decline of tobacco farming in America . . . In granular, Melville-esque depictions of the process by which tobacco was once cultivated, Berry crafts a paean to a distant way of life. The author’s fans will love this." —Publishers Weekly
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.
Creators
WENDELL BERRY, an essayist, novelist, and poet, has been honored with the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the John Hay Award of the Orion Society, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, among other distinctions. In 2010, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama, and in 2016, he was the recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle. Berry lives with his wife, Tanya Berry, on their farm in Henry County, Kentucky.
"Now over 90 years old, Berry seems to have embedded in his latest novel, Marce Catlett, a kind of last word for his readers—a goodbye from Port William to us . . . [But] at the end of Marce Catlett, I realized this is not the end of Port William. All its stories still exist. There’s a reason Mr. Berry took us backward and forward in the timeline. He was teaching us how to love a people and a place, if only in our imagination, and those stories are still there." —Russell Moore, Christianity Today
"Vintage Berry, elegiac and elegant, with a profound sense of all that has been lost." —Kirkus Reviews
"Wendell Berry has never hidden behind his stories; the land and people of Port William, Ky., have always been his land and his people. This truth is perhaps never more obvious than in Marce Catlett . . . Wendell Berry returns to his beloved Port William, offering a kind of benediction full of longing for a former life threaded with wonder at its beauty and its humble persistence." —Shelf Awareness
"Berry explores the heritage of Andy Catlett, protagonist of his Port William stories and novels in this wistful tale of the steady decline of tobacco farming in America . . . In granular, Melville-esque depictions of the process by which tobacco was once cultivated, Berry crafts a paean to a distant way of life. The author’s fans will love this." —Publishers Weekly
