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0-929264-63-0
$14.95 hardcover
6 x 9
196 pages
Down Home Press
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There may not be many country
stores left, and the ones that are still around have probably abandoned
the pot-bellied stove in favor of central heat. But in Country Cured,
Jerry Bledsoe carries on the storytelling, philosophizing tradition of
that bygone institution.
Like the fellows who were
fixtures of country living, contemplating life from the corner housing
those old black stoves, Bledsoe tracks the human condition to its
source, the heart. What he finds there renews his spirit and informs his
writing.
In a style as easy-going and
as pleasant to read as an afternoon on the front porch sipping iced tea
and watching the cars pass by, Bledsoe writes about the territory common
to us all. His town could be our town; his family, ours.
For he is exploring universal
themes: family, love, work, nature, community, change, tradition.
Roaming hills and woodlands, seacoasts and sidewalks in Country Cured
is like traveling widely in Concord with Thoreau, like hitching a ride
with Charles Kuralt. Not since Lake Wobegon has an unfamiliar world been
made so vividly known.
The landscape Bledsoe
explores encompasses humor and suffering, loss and renewal, eccentrics
and the familiar pull of home and love. He speaks in a wise and soothing
voice of a personal vision so alive and engaging that it turns small
into large, the private into the universal.
about the author
Jerry Bledsoe is an award-winning author of several books, including Bitter
Blood, Blue
Horizons: Faces and Places from a Bicycle Journey Along the Blue Ridge
Parkway, and From
Whalebone to Hot House: A Journey Along North Carolina's Longest Highway.
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