Dear Wendell Berry. I hope you read this.

Dear Wendell Berry,

If my eyes are blood-shot tomorrow morning and I’m unable to stay awake during breakfast with my six children, it is your fault.

If I sell all I possess in order to purchase back the farm on which I grow up, I hold you responsible.

I don’t like to make extreme statements, but I have just finished what might become my favorite book of all time, beating out long-standing favorites Fair and Tender Ladies and To Kill A Mockingbird.

I also could be delusional.

Perhaps I’ll be thinking more clearly in the morning. The later morning, I should clarify, as it is currently 1:51 a.m. and I am typing this on my iPhone because I have to get these words out of my mind.

The house is silent and I can’t believe they have all slept through my shockingly loud cries through most of this book.

At least twice I was afraid I would stop breathing between my excessive tears and my current congested state.

I know certain stories strike you at certain times and it’s electric. I know it is possible that a future reading of this novel by a future me may not have the same potential to strike such a clear chord.

I just googled your name to be sure you were still living. According to internets, you still are.

I’m so glad.

Hannah Coulter is the story I wish I had written.

It’s somehow the song of my heart that I never recognized.

The words are poetry and dripping with beauty and truth and love in a living way.

How can a man write a woman’s heart so piercing, so honest and unflinching?

This is a gift.

And a miracle.

I have to believe a part stems from the universality of themes such as love and raising children. Of the truth of belonging to a world and a land and a culture that belongs in you.

I don’t think you can know this if you were born in a city. I think you can long for it and invent it for yourself even, but I think you have to be born to love a piece of land and an idea and a view from an old front porch.

Born in it and among it and drinking the well water and leading the cows to the taller grass and eating the chickens living in your barn.

This story was tragic and brave and sweeping and compelling in all the ways lasting tales that matter should be.

The story of Hannah feels like my story as a mother. Like every mother’s story. Its pain is physical. Its hope is palpable.

It feels like my dad’s story. Of selling the farm. Of watching four children walk away from the heritage and the expectations with no clue as to what they were leaving and why it mattered. Just knowing the farm was hard work and they were off to Better.

It’s the story of my parents. Loving long, but one leaving the other to live right on alone.

I’m sure you’ve been praised for this work before. By people with degrees and titles and awards in their hands.

And this novel deserves all that.

But I feel obliged to echo my sentiments as well. To toss my words into the air and hope they land at your feet.

From one educated former farm kid to one author painting a picture and making a plea – thank you.

For reminding me of Then. Of woods and picnics by the tobacco barn. Of hard work and being your own master. Of pulling together and gathering all the hay before the rain hits.

Of breathing the Virginia air and sleeping soundly at night and feeling that your work was beautiful. And it mattered.

May this book leave me changed.

Yours,

Lacey