by Paul Lehmberg
"Drawn by the sweetness, I spent portions of my first days walking...correcting those parts of memory that had lost authenticity and redrawing what the rub of time had erased over the winter." The author, a professor of English at Northern Michigan University, spent a summer alone at a cabin in the Ontario woods. There is a lake nearby, and he has a dog. These essays describe that season of reappraisal. Lehmberg is least interesting when he tries to say something original about time or the beauty of the northern lights. His matter-of-fact tone works best with homey details about his grandparents or explaining his notion that menial, repeated tasks such as woodchopping are finally the most satisfying of all. This is a young man's bookâthe author, self-indulgent and a romantic, was 28 when he wrote it. (St. Martin's Press, $8.95)
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