Nathan Coulter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960 (revised North Point, 1985).

Also collected in Three Short Novels. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2002.

From the back cover:

Nathan Coulter begins Wendell Berry's sequence of novels about the citizens of Port William, Kentucky - a setting that is taking its place alongside Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, and Winesburg, Ohio, as one of our most distinctive and recognizeable literary locales.

"The Coulter family, like the rest of the people who dwell in this tiny farming community ... are caught on the wheel of nature, which is at once blindingly beautiful and unwittingly cruel ... The narrative is stunning, the natural scene is beautifully evoked." Los Angeles Times

"An assured depiction of the coming of age of a young man in rural America ... By any standards an unusual and rewarding writer, Berry is especially recommended to readers struggling with the moral and ethical questions confronting contemporary Americans." Newsday

"Berry's prose, so carefully tuned you never know it is there, carries us into the very heart of Nathan Coulter and into the land itself." San Jose Mercury News

"Spare, elegant, and eloquent ... Nathan Coulter ... is an absolute jewel." San Francisco Chronicle

Cover design and illustration by Laurie Anderson. 180 pages.

First Sentences:

Dark. The light went out the door when she pulled it to. And then everything came in close around me, the way it was in the daylight, only all close.