The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

As in thought he passes backward into time, the country becomes quieter, and it seems to grow larger. The sounds of engines become less frequent and farther apart until they cease altogether. On a clear Kentucky night in 1888, a young woman risks her life to save a stranger from a drunken mob. Almost a hundred years later, her great-grandson Andy climbs a hill at the edge of town, and is flooded with memories of all he has lived, seen and heard of the past century – of farmers wooing schoolteachers and soldiers trudging home from war; of the first motor car, the Great Depression and Vietnam; of neighbourly feuds and family secrets; of grief and betrayal – and of great friendship that endures for a lifetime. These are Wendell Berry’s tales of Port William, a little farming community nestled deep in the Kentucky River valley.