At a time when Americans exhibit a distinct yearning for more straightforward and honest relationships with one another, Granville Austin's portrait of Norwich, Vermont--told in distinctive, well-seasoned prose--reminds us of the lasting impacts our lives have on one another.

 

Granville Austin

Retrieving Times
Granville Austin
White River Press, 2008

Author Granville Austin was only five years old when his family moved to a small town in Norwich on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River in 1932. Back then, this vibrant community boasted more dirt roads than asphalt, and more farmers than professors from nearby Dartmouth College. In summer there was haying and fishing, band concerts on the common and cool lemon Cokes at the local drugstore. Fall meant hunting, while winter meant downhill skiing at a time when getting to the top of a hill meant hiking, not ski lifts.

But Austin's time travels to the Norwich of his youth are far more than pleasant excursions. They're emotional evocations of the men, women, and boyhood friends who populated the author's world, the people who "larned" him the meaning of honor, of fairness, and of the devotion necessary to turn a small collection of houses and stores into a community with a powerful pulse of its own.

So follow Granville Austin's beckoning hand back in time to meet Mrs. Marion Cross, a remarkable teacher who started in a one room schoolhouse yet would understand the toughest of today's classrooms. And Will Bond, the author's neighbor and the subject of a painting by artist Paul Sample. Learn how to ski downhill when "grooming the slope" meant tamping down the snow yourself. And understand the significance of the question from the gun shop owner, "Where will the bullet stop?" Visiting Vermont is always a treat but, with a writer like Austin as your guide, you'll find it as satisfying as biting into a new-picked apple on a clear October day.

 

Buy This Book

Order here

Or buy at your local bookstore
or online at

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

"This is a wonderful book. Austin describes in delicious detail small-town life in Vermont of the thirties of the last century. Once you start reading it, you won't stop until Austin stops."
Davie Hapgood, author of Monte Cassino and translator of Albert Camus' The First Man.

"Retrieving Times isn't just memoir, or history, it is the biography of a beloved place, Norwich, Vermont, which Granville Austin first encountered in 1932. Across three-quarters of a century, Austin has indeed retrieved something astonishing: a town remember in its detail, through its characters, and through the wisdome of those around him. He has managed to find and recapture an American place, free of both nostalgia and the bitterness that often colors small time life, especially for those who have left it behind."
Philip Kennicott, Culture Critic,
The Washington Post

 "With lively prose, Granville Austin (known as Red throughout his times here) paints an insightful and colorful portrait of his youth in Norwich, Vermont. Whether you were born in the '20s or many years later, the characters and times Red evokes cast a spell and bring one to envy how he was "larned."
Nancy Osgood, president, Norwich Historical Society

more information about White River Press