You'll Like Linton
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In his early days Hanno Buchwald engaged as much with places and things as with persons. Persons were few in number. Persons were almost always family members and neighbors, all familiar and predictable. On the rare occasions of a trip to town, strangers frightened him. Getting back home, every tree and fence corner had its place.
The word isolation is used often in this story of Hanno and his family. Isolation was more than living far from town. It was more than not living on a public road or street. It was more than not having a nice long lane leading up to a farmhouse. Hanno lived where, to the outsider, there was no one clear means of approach. Was there a creek to cross, mud to mire the wheels, cows to slip through the gate, a mean bull? When you get to the house, on which door do you knock? Yell from outside the screened porch?
One entrance was to drive among rows of fruit trees in the neighbor’s orchard. Another was through the pastures with three latched gates. Another was a footpath through woods, creek, and gulley. From the opposite direction of Plum Branch School one could go through two gated pastures to the back side of the barnyard. The result of these options was to have no peddlers or casual family visitors. Families intent upon visiting would sometimes be seen walking as a group across a pasture. They were afraid of miring the car in the mud. In such cases Mary, Hanno’s mother, would often yell to one of the children, “Go kill a chicken!”
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About the Book
It is 1928 when Hanno Buchwald is born in the only hospital in Linton, Indiana. As he grows up on an isolated one-hundred-acre farm far from gravel roads and playmates, Hanno helps care for his ailing grandfather, works in the fields and kitchen, and daydreams atop his family’s grape arbor.
Like almost every farm boy, Hanno learns how to kill a chicken, churn butter, and milk a cow. Left to his own devices for playing, Hanno attaches special importance to visitors that include his brothers’ and parents’ friends, relatives, neighbors, and salesmen. After he begins his education in a one-room schoolhouse, he learns all about life in the town of Linton from his adventurous aunt, who is among the first to have a phone and car. But just as Hanno enters adolescence, World War II begins, sending him on a new path that will test his inner-strength, convictions, and spirit in ways he never imagined.You’ll Like Linton shares the coming-of-age tale of a young dreamer as he matures from a boy into a man in rural Indiana amid uncertain times in America and the world.
About the Author
Rue L. Cromwell is retired as the M. Erik Wright Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology of the University of Kansas. He earned an AB degree in Psychology from Indiana University and a Master of Arts degree and PhD in Clinical Psychology from Ohio State University. This is his sixth book.