Fidelity: Five Stories

It’s just that simple. I am a voracious consumer of Southern or agricultural literature. Wendell Berry never fails to draw engaging characters in challenging stories and novels. Highly recommend.

I have never read his work before. It was delicious and I was sorry it ended!!

really enjoyed this book

These stories make me laugh, cry, and yearn for a world out of our reach. The story of Burley’s rescue is especially moving.

The prose is both poetic and engaging. The stories are timeless. I didn't want to put the book down. And when your family comes from the county, it grabs you all the more.

Wendell Berry has an amazing ability to capture what goes into a character's motivation. By the time he is finished describing a scene, the reader knows the players well enough to have sympathy for those involved even where horrible choices are being made. This is an amazing book of people with whom I would want to be friends.

These have been among my favorite of Wendell Berry's short stories since the early 1990s. Like all of his writing about the Port William membership, these develop the characters of individuals in whom I see traits that are familiar in me or in people I know. The goodness, or the weakness and darkness, of these characters are written about in a way that causes me to reflect on my own connections with the human community and also with the earth on which we all live. Beautiful, uplifting, hopeful, and sad all at the same time, they are stories which I read when I want to feel rooted and connected again.

Anything written by Berry is first rate. Fidelity is one his best. The short story by the same name is one of the best short stories I have ever read. I used the story in my ethics classes when I taught at the university.Errol Rohr

Simple, home truths. Simple people living old-fashioned lives but ones which ring true to our modern ears. These stories tell us much about the human condition and show us that our families and those who came before us have much to teach us. Should be read alongside "A Place in Time" by Wendell Berry, I think, to get a sense of who all the characters are, although this stands alone just perfectly by itself too.

I have not yet read everything Wendell Berry has written ... but I intend to do just that. He simultaneously challenges and comforts. A very special talent that can only come from an exceptional thinker and a truly decent man.

You can get an impression of the heart of a man by what he writes. Mr. Berry is a wise soul with a heart of gold.

I am a Wendell Berry fan for life.