The long title sequence documents scenes in the life of a Huron County family still in thrall to the ancestral farm: a father and brother who worked in the city but gave a lifetime of weekends to upkeep the land that "tugged at an unseen part of them." Pilling memorializes a way of life that was on its way out: the end-of-summer community picnic, pies baked at six in the morning in wood ovens; the continuity of generations, family hopes, conflicts and tragedies lived out in a setting that "both shattered and held together" their world.
“This book welcomes me as reader onto its back porch, and I know I will re-enter it many times.”
– The Malahat Review
