Watch Yourself Go By

This is the kind of childhood memoir that makes you ache for a world that no longer exists. Al. G. Field recalls his youth in the countryside with a storyteller's instinct for the perfect anecdote and a character's perfect detail. His younger self, affectionately called "Al-f-u-r-d," is that universal boy: the one who can't resist the mystery of an old well, who turns every ordinary day into an expedition, who finds trouble the way water finds cracks. The opening chapter captures him transfixed by danger while adults laugh and clutch their hearts, and if that doesn't tell you everything about the book, nothing will. Field writes with a nostalgic warmth that never becomes saccharine, finding genuine humor in the chaos of boyhood while capturing something true about what it means to grow up in wide-open spaces. This is a book for anyone who has ever been that child, or anyone who remembers one.