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About the Book

About the Book

A Place in the Country

A Place in the Country marks the welcome return of this beloved writer. Like an American A Year in Provence or Under the Tuscan Sun, this winning memoir speaks to the universal dream of escape, the yearning for what Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden called "a bit of earth." A Place in the Country describes Cunningham's transformation from urban dweller to country sophisticate and takes the reader from the cramped spaces of her Bronx youth to the rolling greenery of the upstate New York farm she eventually settles on.

Cunningham's negotiations with the land, the local gentry (English aristocrats, a swami and his followers, and dairy farmers, among others), and the wildlife (holsteins, deer, chickens, geese, snakes, and pigs) are related with acuity, novelistic grace, and wry humor. Along the way, we revel in some of the most evocative writing about place in recent memory. A Place in the Country is an immensely satisfying book that at once captures the rustic dreams of every city child and the poignant passing of the old-fashioned pastoral life.

A Place in the Country
by Laura Shaine Cunningham

  • Publication Date: June 26, 2000
  • Hardcover: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
  • ISBN-10: 1573221570
  • ISBN-13: 9781573221573