Brief Cherishing: A Napa Valley Harvest

Essayist Flanner (whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, New West, etc.) writes of life on a vineyard in Northern California, where she and her husband, architect and artist Frederick Monhoff (whose wood engravings illustrate the book), moved after years in Southern California. The special times togetherwalking through the woods with their grandchildren, planting a garden, weeding the orchard, battling would-be developers, trying to understand the Mexican gardener, Miguel, whose outlook is very different from theirsare collected here in a harvest of cherished moments. Flanner's writing is sensitive and exquisite, especially when she recalls her husband's death. Reading her subtle and revealing prose is like following a ray of light through a prism. November