Parsons' Mill by Lewontin, Timothy - 1989

Hanover NH / London.: University Press of New England., 1989. First edition. 1st printing.. Hard cover. Fine in fine dust jacket.. Sharrer, Honore (Jacket cover 1951 painting: "Tribute to the American Working People", by).. 1 Black textured paper over boards. Cover spine titles; front circular mill wood saw. 184 p. Audience: General/trade. Non-fiction literary journalism account of a northern New England saw mill business where the author became an employee, a sawyer in training, and found, "a world occupied by gruff millhands toiling in a kind of 19th century time warp". A new college degree isn"t much use in the face of a recession, so Lewontin answered a want add "Sawyer to train. " And train he did, in a lumber mill in New England! His characterizations of his fellow laborers are drawn with a sensitivity and vividness reminiscent of John Steinbeck, while the dominant figure of shrewd, contradictory, and mean-spirited Parsons slowly emerges as a Yankee natural to the darker side of Robert Frost. A beautifully crafted account of his workplace that will draw you in with a magnetism usually encountered only in fiction.