Chesapeake Boyhood: Memoirs of a Farm Boy

By William H. Turner

Book Overview

Chesapeake Boyhood is an account of growing up on the lower Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake during the years following the Great Depression. Turner's stories include rousing tales of 'coon hunting, crabbing, boat building, duck hunting, oyster tonging, and Saturday jaunts to town. Turner brings the characters, experiences, waterscape, and landscape of rural Virginia to life as no one has done before or is likely ever to do again. His own drawings illustrate the stories, and they, too, win us over with their honesty and charm. "Its chief virtue (besides its highly literate style), it seems to me, is its intimate, sensory knowledge of a vanishing Chesapeake landscape: its sounds and smells, the way things feel to the touch, the lore lodged in the names of the commonest creatures and activities . . . At one point Turner likens the local farmers and fishermen sitting around the table in the country store to fixed positions on a compass, with all the cardinal points taken, ' and I think of this book] as a kind of compass too, that describes one man's orientation to the Eastern Shore."--Andrea Hammer, St. Mary's College "Modern outdoor writing has enough anemic adventures by faint-hearted writers reared in the suburbs. What it needs more of is the droll wit of an Ed Zern, the robust foolishness of a Patrick McManus, and the lean prose of an Ernest Hemingway. It gets all three in the tales of Bill Turner."--George Regier, author of Heron Hill Chronicle and Wanderer on My Native Shore "Storms, boat wrecks, childhood pranks and even old dogs are remembered with a sense of humor in Turner's book. He has captured the rhythms of country life in a time before fast cars, credit cards, and air pollution."-Waterman's Gazette

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801855896
• ISBN13: 9780801855894
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 8.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A Step Back in Time

This book is a warm, personal look at a time and places on the Bay that are forever lost to most of us. It is such a pleasure to meet characters and hear about practices and community living of a by-gone era. I'm biased--I love the Bay. And while this book satisfies my interest in learning more about life on the Chesapeake, it's also a wonderful tale of an American boy's life in a rich and beautiful setting. It's a great bedside book.

Chesapeake Boyhood: Memoirs of a Farm Boy

Loved the book, couldn't wait for the next chapter. Easy to read. Turner has another book East of the Chesapeake and it is a must also. After you read the first one it's nice to check out his museum. In his books he has such an interest in people, he finds something interesting in anyone he seems to meet. Very enjoyable writer.

Earthy author

Dr. Turner writes with dry wit and intimate understanding of the beauty, complexity, and mystery of the Eastern Shore of VA.

Chesapeake Boyhood

With the recent purchase of a 1926 farmhouse on Hoopers Island on Maryland's Eastern Shore, I wanted to learn more about life on the Bay. My family and I hoped this book would shed light on perhaps a gentler time, with a return to "the basics." William Turner has written a wonderful account of his life growing up on the Chesapeake Bay in the 40's and '50s. The stories are entertaining, with laughs, as well as gasps, as well as tears. My sons, ages 10 and 6, beg me to retell his stories on our drives to our new Eastern Shore retreat home. From bear sightings to pig butchering to duck hunting adventures to sinking boats in the dead of winter, William Turner paints vivid images in our minds of life on the Chesapeake Bay during a time of neighborly help and family closeness. He is an artist, and shares his sketches in this book as well, which further brings home the true meaning of his stories. This is a treasure!