Home: Chronicle of a north country life [Hardcover]

Powning combines an extraordinary understanding and sense of place with an affinity for the world of nature. She and her husband, Peter, left their native Connecticut 25 years ago for a farm near the Bay of Fundy, in New Brunswick, Canada. She celebrates their life there in 70 color photos and lyrical prose, chronicling the seasons, marveling at the ephemeral beauty of spring wildflowers and noting the simple pleasures of observation. In winter, Powning longs for a blizzard; without storms, winter creeps by dully. She writes about fields and forests, vegetable gardens and wild fruits, and finds that her life and where she lives are inextricably entwined. This book imparts a feeling of serenity; Annie Dillard fans will enjoy it.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In a poetic memoir, Powning looks back over the past 20 years at the impulses and desires behind a dream she and her husband shared when they moved to a farm in New Brunswick. Embracing the idea of returning to a rural atmosphere, Powning recounts a vibrant life filled with the awesome recognition of their secluded Canadian environment's raw beauty and uncharted forests. Describing the untamed surroundings, Powning's compelling prose melds with her lyrical color photographs to evoke a vivid sense of place. Tracing the geometry of plowed fields, witnessing emerging wildflowers, and reveling in winter's deafening blizzards, Powning forms a seamless testament to a fragile yet wondrous wilderness. Alice Joyce

Brought to life with full-color photos taken by the author, this is a story that will educate and inspire with its profound ability to strike a resonant chord in anyone who has yearned for a simpler life in the country. Filled with rare insight into the earth beneath and the sky above, Home is a powerful celebration of the paths we choose and the journey we take to find a home. 70 photos.

"Beth Powning's beautiful celebration of natural life is meet and proper for these unnatural times. I think it will be read for years to come."

--E.L. Doctorow

"Beth Powning's sensuous photographs and pure, powerful prose lure us into their embrace, laying bare our desire for a union with the natural world. This is the work of a gifted artist."

--Courtney Milne, Sacred Places in North America

"Quite simply, this book is the most evocative marriage of works and photographs I have ever been privileged to experience. From her acute and powerful observation of her physical surroundings, Beth Powning creates images that resonate in the soul."

--Freeman Patterson, Photography and the Art of Seeing