Jager, formerly a professor of philosophy at Yale, details the Michigan family farm that he grew up on in the 1930s. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

YA-- Jager's account of growing up on the family farm in Michigan during the 1940s captures the wholesome spirit of yesterday. He takes readers inside his life as he relives his memories from early childhood to adulthood. The book is well written, entertaining, and heartwarming. Slow to begin, it picks up speed, and the author's voice seems to reach readers in a comforting sort of way. Whether urban or rural, YAs will be able to identify with the feelings and experiences of this family.-- Jeanette M. Lippencott, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Jager, who has taught philosophy at Yale and now lives and writes in New Hampshire, was born into a Michigan Dutch-Calvinist farm community in 1933 and grew up in a strict, secure family of seven during the last decades of farming with hand tools, horse-drawn plows, and the moral certainties of an isolated rural world. In this memoir, he views his boyhood from a wistfully ironic perspective of years and physical distance: fond, gently reflective, and mildly regretful that those times are gone. Among his memories are joy at the birth of a younger brother--a breech delivery performed by his father (who had experience with breech calves) in the absence of the doctor; civil disagreements with his father, who favored traditional fanning over the son's advocacy of ""scientific"" ways; the joys of huckleberry pie and ""dipfat,"" the pain of losing skin on a frozen water-pump handle, and the panic of being suddenly buried under a ton of flipped hay. And, through it all, the constant round of tasks, indoors and out, then matter-of-factly performed, but now exhausting to read about. In a foreword, poet Donald Hall, a neatly symmetrical opposite to Jager by growing up in New Haven and a New Hampshire farm and spending his teaching years in Ann Arbor, Michigan, calls Jager's reminiscence ""useful nostalgia,"" needed ""not so much for mourning as for knowing."" Whatever, it brings back another world with affecting precision. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.