Summer Reading 2

If I hadn't been doing a long, lazy browse in the memoir section of the library in Amherst, I might never have known this book existed. I was flattened by a cold last week and this was the perfect book for reading during a sick spell in early July.

Anne Barclay Priest, actor, shepherd and writer, published this memoir (as far as I can tell it's her only book) in 2006. The book opens, as prologue, with her reaction to the sudden, tragic death of a friend in Nova Scotia -- someone I would later learn was a vet and sheep farmer in Truro!
Although the book is set on the south shore of Nova Scotia, the exact opposite shore from mine, it's wonderful to read about someone who decides to move to rural Nova Scotia on a whim:
"I went up to Nova Scotia during the summer of 1971 to look at a piece of land that my friends, Ruth and Bob Cram, had told my ex-husband about."
And just like that -- she fell in love. Although she never hooks up with a Nova Scotia country boy, she often writes about how helpful her neighbours and local friends were; she learned quite quickly that Maritimers love to help.

Regardless of whether she was writing about people or animals or the weather, Priest was a simple and elegant writer, lots of description without being flowery.
I enjoyed the first half of the book much more than the second half; that's my bias towards Nova Scotia, but it also had to do with the interest and excitement of her learning to keep sheep. Once she started to write about her new sheep farm in New York state, however, (she wintered there and continued to summer in Nova Scotia), the story became very "sheepy" and more about breeding; I also wasn't much interested in her acting career. I was there for the sheep, the dogs and island life in Nova Scotia.
Plus, there's an entire, long chapter near the end devoted to her trip to Israel with "Peace Fleece" - I admit I skipped that chapter.

The real strength of this book is her summers in Nova Scotia: buying the land and a 200 year old  house to move onto the land, buying the island and putting sheep and cattle out there, then it's all the people she meets and how they teach her and help her. This is one tough cookie! Throughout the book, someone is always dying for some reason, but it is never overdone or sad; it's just a part of life.

I loved reading about a vet and sheep farmer, and his family, who lived close to where I live now (in Truro) -- and was delighted to discover the family still has its sheep farm on Isle Madame, Cape Breton, where my writing mentor and friend Marjorie Simmins lives. Marjorie says when I get the chance to visit her, she'll introduce me to the daughter, Sarah, who is keeping the farm going.

Anne Barclay Priest died in November 2010 at the age of 83.