"A remarkable, poignant collection." --Choice

"This oral history of black Madison is an invaluable primary document for students, general readers, and scholars. Interestingly it illuminates the white side of Madison as much as it reveals about what transpired in the black community." --Darlene Clark Hine, from the Foreword

Twenty Black residents of a small Ohio River town here tell the stories of their lives. Madison, though in the North, had its cultural roots in the south, and for most of the twentieth century the town was strictly segregated. In their own words, Black men...

Harlan and Anna Hubbard, newly married in middle age, build the boat of their dreams and drift down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Harlan is an artist and a writer with a poet's eye for the beauty of the world. Anna is a musician and an elegant master of the arts of graceful living. For seven years (1944-1951) the Hubbards make their home on their little boat, drifting with the river, camping on the land.

Together they learn how to create and sustain a self-sufficient way of life that is infinitely fulfilling. It is a "river way of life" -- free-flowing, endowed with the love of...

An intimate and inspiring testament by Kentucky's own Thoreau, Hubbard's journals record a life lived in harmony with nature. The third and climactic volume, Payne Hollow Journal, contains entries from the years he and his wife, Anna, lived at their Payne Hollow home along the Ohio River's Kentucky shore.