cover image Views from Valley Front

Views from Valley Front

Beatrice Jefferson Stubbs. John F. Blair Publisher, $6.95 (68pp) ISBN 978-0-89587-053-7

Retired and living alone, octogenarian Stubbs discusses the joys of country life in this short collection of essays. She tends a garden of summer wildflowers and reflects on the Appalachian mountains that surround Dilliard, Ga., her hometown. She bakes bread using a colonial American recipe and participates in a health-food cooperative composed of ""ecologically militant'' young people. She poignantly describes growing old and suggests exercises for keeping fit. Although written with charm, humor and wisdom, many of the essays fail to use imaginative language. Others rely too often on religious maxims or cliches, and some have insufficiently developed themes. Except for a moving essay about the Cherokee Indians, all in all these works disappoint. (July)