Indian Summer: Musings on the Gift of Life

Samuel F. Pickering

Jan 2005 · University of Missouri Press

About this ebook

"Indian Summer is the newest collection of personal essays by Sam Pickering. In typical Pickering fashion, he seeks to capture the gift of living. He brings to the page again his family, students, and a wealth of country characters who live in places that exist only in his imagination and who wander through the stories he tells." "He describes how his life has been altered by his children leaving home for college, and he ponders the changes aging brings and the things that never change. The consummate teacher, he celebrates academic life and the pleasures of the classroom. Readers will roam familiar ground with Pickering as he explores the fields and small hills of eastern Connecticut and the bogs and woods on his farm in Nova Scotia." --Book Jacket.

About the author

Samuel F. Pickering is a Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut. His unconventional teaching style was one of the inspirations for the character of Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams in the film Dead Poets Society. Academically, Pickering specializes in the familiar essay, children's literature, nature writers, and 18th- and 19th-century English literature. He has published many collections of nonfiction personal essays as well as over 200 articles. Pickering and his wife, Vicki, live in a small house in Connecticut with three little rescue dogs and two imaginary grandchildren. "Well-behaved children," he writes, "mannered and old-fashioned, kids whogenuflect to their elders and use bad language only at the dinner table at home."