Publisher's Weekly Review
Tracing her family history for nearly two centuries by focusing on just one house, Philip's meandering but mesmerizing memoir is set in Talavera, a rambling Federal-period manse on several hundred acres in the Hudson Valley, two hours from downtown Manhattan. Spurred by the 1992 death of her father, who for more than 40 years had tended the land's thousands of apple and other fruit trees, Philip began to dig through the accumulated household accounts, daily journals, family letters and collected artifacts stretching back to 1807, when the house was built, and even to 1730, when her Dutch forebears first settled the land. Her aim was to learn how her family has held on to the land for so long, and to understand why, though confronted by harsh financial realities, she and her mother and four siblings are determined to carry on. In a style that's more prosaic than poetic, she tells of her own decision to take a leave (as professor of English at Colgate) to help her mother run the farm, while exploring her fascinating family past of 18th-century manor lords and tenant farmers, Civil War and World War II heroes, dissipated sons and rebellious daughters, suffragette aunts and grandmothers and, most stirring of all, the existence of a half-sister her father never knew he had (or if he did, never told his own family about). Both narrative threads are profoundly personal. Braided together with insight, they pay homage to the ideals of home and family with a resonance that should extend beyond her home region. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
An exquisite rendering of a Hudson Valley family farm, as detailed and colored as a Persian miniature, from Philip (English/Colgate Univ.; The Road Through Miyama, 1989). Since 1732, Philip's family has had a farm in Columbia County, New York. Talavera, the farm mansion built by her forebears the Van Nesses, is where her mother lives today, though precariously. Maintaining a farm on such desirable property is tough. The pick-your-own apple and pear operation the family had run for the past few decades produces too little income these days to contend with high taxes and the cost of labor and agricultural inputs. The thought of losing Talavera is crippling to Philip: "I know where I am when I am here. I am home." Attempting to fathom her attachment, the author reads the wonderfully complete record of diaries and business accounts and work orders that comprise the family archive. They provide a remarkably clear picture of the farm, starting from the years preceding the Civil War. Although the gentleman who built the house was a bit of a local grandee, the Van Ness/Philip family were not country squires, but working farmers who tended orchards and hog operations, horses and field crops. The letters so lovingly kept also reveal a cast of family characters: "The wild aunt, the radical aunt, the aunt who had been forgotten altogether. All had lived at Talavera and had left their mark." There are rectitudinous men and women, and there are black sheep: "Gaston was sent out of the country for a while until the affair settled down." And while Philip comes to recognize that Talavera is much a part of her identity, she also begins to understand the Van Ness/Philip brood were a footloose bunch that rarely had a boodle, and if she were forced to surrender Talavera to development, her ties would never be cut. Philip's family history is alarmingly transporting, and her sense of place so rich you can taste it.
Booklist Review
In part memoir, part historical chronicle, Philip takes readers along as she delves into the trunks, boxes, diaries, and accounts that have accumulated through the centuries in the plentiful closets, attics, and barns at her family's Hudson Valley estate. Intertwining pieces of family history with narratives of current daily activities as her family struggles to keep their fruit farm viable, Philip explores the complex relationship of family and land. The historical segments focus on the male family members during wartime, drawing on letters written during the Civil War by her great-uncle and letters from her father to his parents during World War II. While attempting to find out more about the women in the family, the author discovers a secret about which no one in the family seems to know (although people in the community were aware of the situation). Philip skillfully places details about her family within the context of events in American culture to make this an intriguing work on many levels. --Randall Enos
Library Journal Review
Philip (English, Colgate Univ.; The Road Through Miyama) grew up at Talavera, an estate in New York's Hudson Valley that has been in her family since 1807 and is now a working apple orchard, struggling to survive. Philip and her four siblings had to help their mother maintain the estate after the death of their father, no small feat considering the financial risk and the vast history of the land. Philip researched Talavera and her family, finding that it is no ordinary one; she uncovered diplomats, war heroes, renegade aunts, irresponsible playboys, and even an illegitimate child. While all this may bring to mind family-based TV sagas like The Big Valley or Dallas, the fact that the story is still unfolding as you read makes it all the more riveting. Relying on both family lore and documents from historical societies, this is one of the most finely written family histories available. Recommended for public and academic libraries. Lee Arnold, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
