From the Harcourt "Harvest Book" back cover:

"Old Jack" Beechum, a retired farmer whose 92 years of life close to the land have been lived out in a small Kentucky River town and go back to the Civil War, recounts his life on radiant September day in 1952. In the retelling, novelist and poet Wendell Berry recreates Jack's life as a boy, lover, husband, father, farmer, and revered community figure. As his memories gradually build our awareness, a hauntingly profound portrait of a truly memorable man emerges, commemorating values once taken for granted as American, which we are now seeking, as a people, to regain.

"Few novelists treat both their characters and their readers with the kind of respect that Wendell Berry displays in this deeply moving account ... The Memory of Old Jack is a slab of rich Americana, eloquent testimony that 'it's not a tragedy when a man dies at the end of his life.'" The New York Times Book Review

"Berry draws upoon his enormous poetic talent to develop the theme of man's deep attachment to the land ... The account of Jack's courtship of his wife is a beautiful piece of writing ... and worthy of a place among the best pieces of prose written by American writers of this century. " Library Journal

Harcourt "Harvest Book" jacket design by Judith Kazdym Leeds. 223 pages.

 From the Counterpoint back cover:

"The rarest (and highest) of literary classes consists of that small group of authors who are absolutely inimitable.... One of the half-dozen living American authors who belong in this class is Wendell Berry." Los Angeles Times Book Review

In a rural Kentucky river town, "Old Jack" Beechum, a retired farmer, sees his life again through the shades of one burnished day in September 1952. Bringing the earthiness of America's past to mind, The Memory of Old Jack conveys the truth and integrity of the land and the people who live from it. Through the eyes of one man can be seen the values Americans strive to recapture as we arrive at the next century.

Counterpoint design by David Bullen. Cover art by Harlan Hubbard, Campbell County Hill Farm, 1933. 170 pages.

First Sentence:

Since before sunup Old Jack has been standing at the edge of the hotel porch, gazing out into the empty street of the town of Port William, and now the sun has risen and covered him from head to foot with light.