The Pear Tree: elegy for a farm

Bethany Reid's The Pear Tree: elegy for a farm is more than a haunting elegy for a farm; it's a powerful evocation of childhood and a vanished way of life. In poems lush with detail, Reid renders the beauty and suffering of bygone days, not with nostalgia but with clear-eyed honesty, as each poem reveals its hidden facets. Under the watchful eye of a pear tree planted by a grandmother on homesteaded land, we witness the pleasure of day-to-day life rooted in the earth, the heart-wrenching loss of a brother, a father "who taught us to choose what matters and put a fence around it," a devout mother who can still play the piano when words have flown. "Who will gather what we leave behind?" one poem asks. Moving freely back and forth in time, this well-steeped, finely-honed collection offers a complex, satisfying answer.

-Holly J. Hughes, author of Hold Fast