“The Land Remembers: The Story of a Farm and Its People” by Ben Logan 917.75 LO

Many years ago for the first Staff Favorites bibliography, everyone was supposed to suggest a good book they’d read within the past year and then a book that was their all-time favorite.  Librarian Judi Sarafin’s all-time favorite was “The Land Remembers”.   This interested me because it was nonfiction and the Judi I knew tended to enjoy reading romances.  That alone was enough to spur me on to read it.  There was a big “HOWEVER”, however.  I was in so many book discussion groups that I didn’t have much time for outside reading.  My goal then was to get one of those discussion groups to read “The Land Remembers”.  It took me years because “there’s so many books, so little time”.  Last year the River Action Environmental Book Group chose it, but  I had to miss their discussion!  So I put it on the list of possibilities for the Library’s Contemporary Books Discussion Group and, hooray, they chose it for this year.  At last I would find out what Judi had been talking about. 

“The Land Remembers” is a charming, nostalgic memoir of rural Wisconsin and a close-knit farm family.  Here’s the first sentence: “Once you have lived on the land, been a partner with its moods, secrets, and seasons, you cannot leave.”   It’s a book about living responsibly with the land and details the old processes of farming from planting to harvesting.   It was published in 1975just before the huge interest in creative nonfiction, but Logan skillfully uses some of the techniques of fiction writers to create suspense and build atmosphere.  His family and the hired man, Lyle,  are the characters.  The reader comes to know and like them.   Here is a book that had us both laughing and crying–literally.  After our discussion, all copies were purchased by the attendees, which seldom happens, so “The Land Remembers” was definitely considered worthwhile–not only to read, but to own.  Thanks, Judi!