Some writers look at life with their eyes, others with their heart. In this collection of evocative, funny, and moving stories, Peter Damm does both. These are vignettes of growing up in small town, rural Michigan, but also a closely observed portrait of mid-century America. The tone is alternately wry, elegiac, poignant, and humorous, as Damm recalls the joys of fishing on a northern lake, the rigors and confusion of childhood, or feasting on blueberries in autumn. But this isn’t a collection of pretty postcards. Damm’s family experienced difficulty, alcoholism, and loss, and he writes with a survivor’s compassion. The writing is beautiful—spare, direct, lyrical, truthful. These are stories for all the senses, held in place by strands of memory alternately steel and gold.
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“Damm tenderly sketches out the delights and tribulations of a seemingly quiet Midwestern childhood…We hear the questions of a smart, sensitive young man trying to puzzle out the mysteries of sin, sex, and spirit and make sense of the adult world…[with] gentleness and humor.”
— J. Ruth Gendler, author of The Book of Qualities
“The setting is as much a character in the book as the people…Damm writes about autumn in Northern Michigan with lyrical wonder.”
— Michigan Today“I will wear this book out to my heart’s content.”
— Susan Harper, writer, book editor, and university creative writing instructor“Wild Blueberries is a joy to read…a lyrical, rich, and complex account of growing up in rural Michigan.”
— Leo Litwak, winner of the Jewish National Book Award“This is a lovely collection of stories, well conceived and beautifully told. The clean economy of the language and its cadences possess a quality that is almost poetic. Wild Blueberries is a gem of a book.”
— William Rodarmor, award-winning journalist and translatorBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Peter Damm’s life has traveled varied tracks. He has studied with National Book Award winner Wright Morris, and with Guggenheim Fellow and National Jewish Book Award winner Leo Litwak in the Master’s Creative Writing Program at San Francisco State University. He has lived abroad and traveled widely in Europe, India, Bali, Mexico, and parts of the Middle East, Indonesia, Central and South America, and New Zealand. His book of poems, At The Water’s Edge, chronicles a five-month journey in Bali, Indonesia, and New Zealand.
Joe Barrett, an actor and Audie Award and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has appeared both on and off Broadway as well as in hundreds of radio and television commercials.