Loss bookends Middleton’s memoir, yet the story of old men connected to an Earth they love embeds in the reader’s love for something we may not know.  But we want to.  Fall in love with Middleton (now gone): fall in love with the Earth (perilously hanging on).

• Everyone I’ve gifted this book to has called me, sometimes years later when they got around to reading it, to say ‘Wow, this book is great.”
• Middleton’s coming-of-age memoir salutes old men with a reverence for the gifts from the Earth.