Full Description
I imagine everyone has a center of gravity," says Ellen Geld. "Something which binds one to the earth and gives sense and direction to what one does." Ellen's is a writing table before a window that looks through the trees and down the slope to the croplands, revealing the changing scenes in a place that has become a way of life. The place is Fazenda Pau D'Alho, Brazil, where she and her husband Carson have lived and farmed since 1961. The changing scenes describe planting groves of coffee and pecans, and pasturing cattle in seas of grass. From her writing table, Ellen Geld here gives us View from the Fazenda, intricately weaving the threads of daily life on the farm into the broader pattern she has come to recognize in her quest for the knowledge of a country. Beginning with the serendipitous trip from her native Ohio to the outward reaches of Brazil, Geld provides us with a firsthand account of a remarkable adventure and an extraordinary life. Everywhere, using plain talk and warm humor, she seeks the character of a people who - arriving as immigrants or slaves, their blood and history mingled with that of native Indians - have created the true character of Brazil: a huge, diverse country, living in several eras at the same time, yet ever changing in its people's amazing ability to "find a way."
