A Country Mile

Katy sat on the old stone bench, scrubbed of its mold, and wished she could warn all those eager faces waiting to return to the old town, the old farm, the old ways that nostalgia is an extravagance to be enjoyed frugally. "When you return home," she would explain," stand close enough to enjoy the glow of the hearth fire but not so close as to be scarred and maimed for life. When you leave a place where all your yesterdays are buried deep, visit briefly, leave fast, and never turn back." A Country Mile is the story of Katy, who has yearned for many years to return to her family home in Tennessee, to an historic plantation that served as a military hospital duringr the Civil War. The story, at times tender, at times violent, is set against a background of local color. The romance is vivid and the message reiiterates Thomas Wolfe's lament that one can never go home.