I came across this when browsing the Carleton library stacks a while ago.
The title grabbed me (I’m a sucker for anything gravel related), but the book turned out to be a wonderful memoir of life growing up in northern Wisconsin during the Great Depression, not far away from the locales where I grew up fifty years later. Robert Peters – apparently a poet of some regional note – arranged the book by season, and did a splendid job of describing how the year proceeds in the Northwoods, especially for a semi-impoverished family like his. Peters is especially good at relating the indelible incidents of his youth, from everyday farm work to strange and even disturbing incidents. Anyone who’s been up north will like this book.