*Starred Review* Like the rest of Berry's fiction, more than 50 years of it, beginning with the novel Nathan Coulter (1960), these 20 stories are about what one of the most developed of the characters, Burley Coulter, calls the membership of Port William, a farming community in Kentucky not far south of the Ohio River. This is the author's region, too, and decades of his family and their neighboring friends, from the Civil War era to the present, are the models for the people in his fiction. Presented chronologically, these stories span the entire period covered in Berry's work, from 1864 to nowadays. Readers of Berry's other fiction will know some of the narrators humorous, independent, compassionate Burley Coulter; lifelong but by no means unromantic bachelor Jayber Crow; and quietly magisterial Andy Catlett, the most frequent storyteller and Berry's surrogate. The incidents range from Andy's great-great-grandmother's face-off with a renegade soldier to Burley's eyewitness account of the unwillingly outrageous courtship of Big Ellis to Andy's young son Marcie's reaction to the sudden death of Elton Penn, the finest farmer his father ever knew. The language is warm and cool, as called for; consists mostly of one- and two-syllable words; and constitutes a style as clean and distinctive as Hemingway's, as perspicacious as Mark Twain's.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2010 Booklist

Berry (Hannah Coulter) returns home to Kentucky in his 10th volume in the Port William Membership series with 20 new interconnected stories of the sleepy farming community and its townsfolk. Told from various perspectives and in cadenced reflections, these quiet and meditative "relics and scraps of memory" speak eloquently of familial and romantic love, slavery and war, loss and time's slow but inevitable passing, all with a solemnity and candor often found in Faulkner or Twain. While each offering holds appeal, some are more striking than others. "Fly Away, Breath (1907)" visits Granny Dawe on her deathbed surrounded by kin and, despite the somber mood, a sudden "Hooo!" from the nearly departed lends buoyancy to the story. Reckless wonderment unique to adolescence runs deeply through "Andy Catlett: Early Education (1943)" as 10-year-old Andy gets an illuminating bird's-eye view of his mother while awaiting her corporal punishment after tramping through the house covered in chimney soot. "Stand By Me (1921-1944)" shows Berry's delicate treatment of tragedy as a stalwart father loses first his wife to illness and later his eldest son to the ravages of war. For longtime fans and those new to the series, this rich slice of evolving Americana is just as poignant and enjoyable as ever. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.