Sunday, March 13, 2011

A powerful story of motherhood, seasons and snakes

SnakesSnakes by Patricia Damery
il Piccolo editions
March 21, 2011

Snakes, by Patricia Damery (Farming Soul, 2010) is a beautifully written novel about a woman coming to terms with family continuity as small farms are packed up and sold off at auctions to those who will never know who once lived there and made of them enduring homes.

Angela leaves the Midwestern farm her family has worked for generations because the roads and fields and traditions are, in spite of their deep values, confining to her coming-of-a-age soul. She attends college in California, receives a degree in biology, becomes a teacher, marries, and has a family. When teaching proves to be an unsatisfactory career, she focuses on her new and all-consuming avocation of weaving.