This was a birthday gift from a woman to a man back in 1984. It is inscribed "Because dreaming isn't always easy--this nudge." There are notes from this "M" to "R" artfully tucked into the book throughout.

Half way through I find I am really enjoying this memoir of starting a new life in a new place. I think the artfully tucked in notes left by the previous reader, M, who gave this book to R for a "nudge" and her pencil marking and comments have been a bit hard to overcome. At the end she has penciled in her commentary. I will reproduce it when the time is right. From the price sticker on the back, I see that this book arrived at Eagle Eye Book Shop, an independent bookstore that offers used as well as new books, in September of 2014. I must have purchased it soon afterwards as I registered it here in January 2015. That's what BookCrossing is for; we want to report the histories of our books. Also, the book has a difficult title. Plants don't dream do they? Can people dream as plants do? It's most likely a direction: "Plant (your) Dreaming Deep" Still, I wish Sarton had refined her words here.

I continue to read this in waves. The writing is beautifully crafted; sometimes I enjoy it. Sarton is a great observer of setting and people. Her Chapter 10, "A Flower-Arranging Summer" is an essay on gardening that could stand alone. "I feel this woman knows me so well--she writes to my heart," M, a previous reader of this book wrote. I wouldn't go that far but I did enjoy the essay.

Yes, as M, prior reader of this particular copy says, this is a book "about a woman and a house." But it is not just that, not just an extended feature for House Beautiful or another shelter magazine. This is a book about making a new life after youth, about finding life from the lives of parents who've left an inheritance that makes founding a new life in a new home possible. Recently I read Benjamin Anastas' article, "The Paper Tomb" in the November 8 New Yorker. Bennigton Classics Professor Claude Frederick wrote an "ambitious" diary of his life, making this task his life's work. He was an influence on contemporary writers like Donna Tartt but the diaries he left behind, at least in my view, were no legacy. It seemed Anastas found his writing style ponderous and it went on forever. And I've been reading at the journals I've kept through the years, finding them mostly really boring. So I'm glad I turned to the refreshment of this well-observed and well-written memoir. May Sarton locates to her new home to find a writing space and silence. In the process she finds community and nature and--a new life. She's realistic about the limits of that new life toward the end of the book. I liked her optimism about old age. She was past 50 and contemplating it. She did live a very long life, eventually moving away from the New England town of Nelson that she describes so lovingly here. At the end, significantly, she chose to be buried there. This is the first May Sarton I've ever read. I was gifted another of her books from a BookCrossing friend and have one of her novels. I will definitely read these soon.

As I read this I often had Annie Proulx's HEART SONGS in mind: https://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/16379922/. The characters in that book inhabited the same New England but with the weight of poverty.

This a gift from BookCrossing, a random community of book lovers. I've left it here in the N Bayard Little Free Library with HEART SONGS, a fictional look at the same territory. If you'd like to join the BookCrossing story of this book, please make a journal entry at our site with the BCID (bookcrossing ID) on the bookplate. BookCrossing is free to join and confidential. You don't have to join to comment.

This book is traveling. It left Jefferson Park and I hope it has found new reading adventures.