Andy Catlett tells the story of his grandfather and father's lives and how their stories, recalled by Andy to his own children and grandchildren, become 'A Story Unending.' Marce Catlett rises in the dark to go from his farm, by horseback and train, to Louisville for the sale of his tobacco crop at the auction house there. The price paid for each year's crop is being determined and destroyed by the power of a single buyer, James B. Duke. This year is especially grim since the price offered each grower is less than the expense of bringing the crop to market, and a year's worth of labor is lost. He returns to his family defeated and determined to discover some way to proceed. Many of his fellow farmers lack the resiliency and resourcefulness to continue, and the end for them is clearly visible. But with the help of other neighbors and growers, a way is discovered to protect the farmers and keep their rural families vital and in place.
Love and duty are the animating agents of Mr. Berry’s tremendous body of writing ... [Berry's] writing conjures the connectedness and simple moral clarity that the people of Port William imperfectly aspire to ... Gratitude seems like an appropriate response to this short and heartfelt work, which further develops a vision of Americanness that eschews the familiar values of progress, mobility and power ... Mr. Berry’s fictional world is flawed, hard and deeply cherishable.
Proves that [Berry] is still penning stories worth telling ... By highlighting the culture in agriculture and the beauty in knowing how to do a particular kind of work, Berry directs our attention to what we have lost ... Poetic invocations of another time and pass on of a way of life Berry doesn’t want us to forget.
Every detail is captured, the story's pace as deliberate as the steps of Marce's horse in the dark and as quiet as Marce's neighbor and companion ... Tender ... Wendell Berry returns to his beloved Port William, offering a kind of benediction full of longing for a former life threaded with wonder at its beauty and its humble persistence.
