SUNY Press Catalog - Spring 2009 - (Page 5) excelsior editions e e A FAMILY PLACE Leila Philip A FAmily PlAce A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family Leila Philip One woman’s journey to uncover her family’s history and understand the ties that bind us to a particular place. After her father’s death in 1992, Leila Philip and her family faced the imminent loss of the Hudson River Valley farm that had been home to the Philip and Van Ness families since 1732. In an effort to save the farm and the family home, a sprawling Federal-period mansion called Talavera, Leila took an unpaid leave from her job and set out with her mother to chart a future for their commercial fruit orchard. After fifteen generations of Philip and Van Ness men, it would be up to these two determined women to hold off the twin threats of bankruptcy and urban sprawl. “Riveting … one of the most finely written family histories available.” — Library Journal “Mesmerizing … 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.” — Publishers Weekly “An exquisite rendering of a Hudson Valley family farm, as detailed and colored as a Persian miniature. Philip’s family history is alarmingly transporting, and her sense of place so rich you can taste it.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Leila Philip is the author of The Road through Miyama, a memoir of her apprenticeship to a master potter in Japan, for which she won the 1990 PEN/Martha Albrand Special Citation for Nonfiction. She teaches English at the College of the Holy Cross and lives in Connecticut with her husband, her son, one dog, two cats, two lizards, and a large, unruly garden. A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family e MARCH 302 pp Trim size: 5 ½ x 8 ½ 37 photographs $14.95/T pb 978-1-4384-2760-7 MEMOIR AMERICAN HISTORy NEW yORK “In A Family Place, Leila Philip manages to seduce the reader into wanting to know what’s happened for centuries behind the doors of her family’s house … an unpretentious, subtly shaded story of the importance of understanding the ghosts and heroes that reside in every ancestral home.” — New York Times www.sunypress.edu http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=61847 http://www.sunypress.edu
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