Jayber Crow

“This is a book about Heaven,” says Jayber Crow, “but I must say too that . . . I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell.” It is 1932 and he has returned to his native Port William to become the town's barber.<br><br>Orphaned at age ten, Jayber Crow’s acquaintance with loneliness and want have made him a patient observer of the human animal, in both its goodness and frailty.<br><br>He began his search as a “pre–ministerial student” at Pigeonville College. There, freedom met with new burdens and a young man needed more than a mirror to find himself. But the beginning of that finding was a short conversation with “Old Grit,” his profound professor of New Testament Greek. <br><br>“You have been given questions to which you cannot be <i>given</i> answers. You will have to live them out—perhaps a little at a time.”<br><br> “And how long is that going to take?”<br><br> “I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.”<br><br> “That could be a long time.”<br><br> “I will tell you a further mystery,” he said. “It may take longer.”<br><br>Wendell Berry’s clear–sighted depiction of humanity’s gifts—love and loss, joy and despair—is seen though his intimate knowledge of the Port William Membership.