Book Description
In the daily round of his thirteenth year, as the seasons turn and the farm is tended, the boy, whose time is the only-yesterday of Calvin Coolidge, whose people are the Plain People living without "frills" in the Shaker Way, becomes a man. That is all, and it is everything. The boy is mauled by Apron, the neighbor's ailing cow whom he helps, alone, to give birth. The grateful farmer brings him a gift, a newborn pig. His father at first demurs, but is persuaded. Rob keeps the pig, names her, and gives her his devotion. He wrestles with grammar in the schoolhouse. He hears rumors of sin. He is taken, at last, to the Rutland Fair. He broadens his heart to make room even for Baptists. And when his father, who can neither read nor cipher, whose hands are bloodied by his trade, whose wisdom and mastery of country things are bred in the bone, entrusts Rob with his final secret, the boy makes the sacrifice that completes his passage into manhood.

About the Author
Robert Newton Peck came from generations of Yankee farmers and was raised on a farm himself. He went on to publish dozens of novels after publishing his first, A Day No Pigs Would Die, in 1972 at the age of forty-four.