Audio Book Description:
follows its hero, Owen Mackenzie, from his birth in the semi-rural Pennsylvaniatown of Willow to his retirement in the rather geriatric community of HaskellsCrossing, massachusetts. In between these two settlements comes Middle Falls, Connectiut, where Owen, an early computer programmmer, founds with apartner, ed Mervine, tje successfil firmof E-O Data, which is housed in an gun factory on the Chunkaunkabaug River. Owen`s education is not merelytechnical but liberal, as the humanity of his three villages, especially that of their femalecitizens, works to disengage him from his youthfulinnocence. As a child he early felt an abyss of calamity beneath the sunny surface quotidian, yet also had a dreamlike sense of leading a charmedexistence. The women of his life, including his wives, Phyllis and Julia, shed what lightthey can. At one juncture he reflects," How lovely she is,naked in the dark! How little men deserve the beauty and mercy of women!" His life as a sexual being merges with the communal shelter of villages:"Avillage is woven of secrets of truths better left unstated, of houses with less window than opaque wall."
