The Earth is Enough: Growing Up in a World of Trout and Old Men

At the age of 14, as the country drifted into war in Vietnam, the author was sent to live with his great uncle and his grandfather on a farm in the Ozarks. In a world far removed from global events, these kind old men, content with solitude and a meager subsistence scraped from the land, occupied their time reading, trout fishing and steadfastly refusing to make concessions to modern technology. They measured the success of their resistance to change by the amount of disapproval they elicited from their God-fearing neighbors, the local preacher and the state agricultural agent, all of whom failed to indoctrinate the pair in the paths of righteousness and profitable farming. Middleton, outdoors columnist for Southern Living magazine, writes with humor and compassion of these witty and articulate eccentrics who changed his life and taught him to love and respect the earth and its creatures. (July)