Leaving Rollingstone

In 1959, Kevin Fenton was born on a family farm overlooking Rollingstone, Minnesota&mdash;a tight-knit village founded by Luxembourgers and so Catholic that the parish school was the only school in town. The farm, and Kevin&#39;s memory, is filled with the closeness of his large family. Dennis, the oldest brother, drives everyone&mdash;rather dangerously&mdash;to school. His sisters dance to records in the afternoons. At bedtime, knock-knock jokes flow between the siblings&#39; rooms. Kevin has the powerful sense of being born lucky.<br /><br />Soon, however, the farm is lost; the school closed; the family fractured. The family&#39;s move from the farm, while not all bad, leaves Kevin yearning for Rollingstone and the old family home. He begins a sometimes self-destructive search for new ways to define himself&mdash;in friendship, in art, in words&mdash;that lasts well into adulthood. And while his losses are still grievous, he begins to see new circuits of possibility and rediscover old sources of strength.<br /><br />Leaving Rollingstone, set in a time of major social change, is a portrait of the inevitability of loss and the power of choice, about how a big-city ad man and novelist reclaimed the enduring values and surprising vitality of his small-town boyhood.<br /><br />