Product Description

The first of Effie Leland Wilder's raucous tales about Hattie McNair and the other residents of FairAcres Retirement Home

Hattie McNair may be retired, but she certainly hasn't retired from life. In journals and letters to a friend, Hattie tells the stories of her fellow residents at a retirement home and of the immeasurable gifts and burdens of aging.

Through the histories, hopes, and hijinks of Hattie's friends and foes, we come to know the Fair Acres folks and to share their triumphs and losses. When they join forces to help an illiterate young handyman, Hattie and company change their lives as well as those of young Arthur Priest and his family. By the time we finish Out to Pasture, we know the pride found in a life lived long and well, and the impact that we can have, no matter our age, on the people-and the world-around us.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1898613 in Books
• Published on: 1990-12-31
• Released on: 2004-08-31
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .82" h x 6.20" w x 8.27" l, .88 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Hattie McNair, the feisty protagonist of this modest, semi-autobiographical first novel, is a widow living in a South Carolina retirement home. Through her diary entries, we watch as the home's residents tell their life stories, exchange confidences and gossip, develop romantic crushes and turn to one another for support. Longing for a change in her daily routine, Hattie debates whether life is worth living. Her answer is a resounding "yes." Together with Minna McKenzie, a retired music teacher, she plays piano duets, belting out a Scott Joplin rag. On an adventurous walk, Hattie discovers an empty, mysterious cottage completely covered with kudzu vines, tracks down its owner, a reclusive widower, and helps persuade him to rent it out. She also comforts her friend, Sarah Moorer, who is dying of cancer. Interpersed with the journal entries are letters to friends and cheery light verse ("August is a messy month/ With skeeters, flies, and fleas, / With thunderstorms and gale alarms/ And weeds up to your knees"). More a sketch than a finished work, this is an unpretentious, occasionally poignant look at aging. Illustrations.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Wilder, a resident of the Presbyterian Retirement Home in North Carolina, puts her observations of her fellow retirees to good use in this charming novel. Written as if it were the memoirs and correspondence of an elderly woman named Hattie McNair residing in the Fair Acres Retirement Home, this fiction is a neatly spun portrait of some kind and gentle elderly men and women and a few bad apples. Hattie is a busybody, though a pleasant and well-intentioned one. She manages to have the handyman tutored in literacy and secures for him a new residence for his growing family. Along the way, she describes the nut cases, the physically failing residents, and several determined souls like herself. A touching portrayal that breathes deserved life into an overlooked generation. Denise Perry Donavin

Review

"A touching portrayal that breathes deserved life into an overlooked generation." --Booklist
"[Effie Wilder] has the writer's eye and the storyteller's gift. Her tales are wry, funny, melancholy, philosophical. Her reflections strike a common chord." --James Kilpatrick, syndicated columnist