"You'll find yourself caught up in the novel's emotion from the very opening scene...love suffuses every page." ~~New York Times

"A lovely book...Honest, moving, homely in the warm and simple sense of the word...It is small, accepting and loving and it succeeds perfectly." ~~Boston Globe

From Amazon.com:

Card catalog description
To a thirteen-year-old Vermont farm boy whose father slaughters pigs for a living, maturity comes early as he learns "doing what's got to be done," especially regarding his pet pig who cannot produce a litter. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Inside Flap Copy
"With plenty of Yankee common sense and dry wit, and some pathos as the boy at 13 takes on the duties of a man. For boys of this age and for the young of any age."--School Library Journal.

About the Author
Robert Newton Peck comes from generations of Yankee farmers. Like the Vermont folk he writes about in his novel, he was raised as a boy in the Shaker Way, which endured even after the sect itself had died out. Its view of life is embodied in the character of his young protagonist's father, who believed that a faith is more blessed when put to use than when put to word: "A man's worship counts for naught, unless his dog and cat are the better for it." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Denise (USA: OH) (2009/06/28):
Per the back cover, "The novel about a boyhood on a Vermont farm, the love between a father and son, and a coming to manhood, that is the moving book of the year."