Wendell Berry: Port William Novels & Stories: The Postwar Years

by Wendell Berry

Genres: General Fiction; Cultural Heritage; Small Town & Rural; Southern

Synopsis

Library of America continues its definitive edition of Wendell Berry's complete fiction, including the novels The Memory of Old Jack and Remembering and 23 brilliant and beautiful stories

In this second volume, Port William faces the disappearance of farms and farmers in the decades after World War II, while Andy Catlett resolves to remain in the Membership

Set along the banks of the Kentucky River in America’s heartland, fictional Port William, Kentucky, is an agrarian world is peopled with memorable and beloved characters collectively known as the Port William Membership. For more than 50 years, Wendell Berry has told Port William’s history from the Civil War to the present day, recapturing a time when farming, faith, and family were the anchors of community and the ligaments that bound one generation to the next.

Now Library of America continues its definitive edition, prepared in close consultation with the author and published for his 90th birthday, presenting the complete story of Port William for the first time in the order of narrative chronology.

This second volume contains 23 stories and 2 novels that span the years 1945 to 1978, as the town faces the forces of mechanization and the looming possibility of its own disappearance. As the generation that came of age after the Civil War disappears, the younger generation increasingly chooses to leave and not return; one of the only exceptions is Andy Catlett, who resolves to remain in and to maintain the Membership.

This definitive edition of Wendell Berry's complete fiction includes detailed notes, endpapers featuring a map of Port William and a Membership family tree, and a chronology of Berry's remarkable life and career.

Release date: July 16, 2024

Publisher: Library of America

Print pages: 800