List $21.95

Ages: 12 and up

Written by Robert Newton Peck - Performed by Terry Bregy - Unabridged Fiction - 2 LIBRARY EDITION CASSETTES - 3 hours

Publisher, Audio Bookshelf (September 1993)

NOTE: LIBRARY EDITIONS are packaged in a sturdy, durable outer vinyl case that stands up to years of repeated use designed for library and rental circulation. Albums are shelvable, space-efficient, with at-a-glance spine titles.

"This beautiful story of love and devotion, and classic coming of age novel comes alive with the talented voice of Terry Bregy. A wise selection for school library collections." --School Library Journal

"This audiotape of the YA classic features an animated, emotionally rich reading by Bregy -this is an excellent project and the reading is first-rate." --Booklist

"Bregy is able to convey a sense of age and experience as well as a sense of innocence. His reading draws the listener into the continuing debate about traditional values - this is a very good recording of a powerful book." --AudioFile

"Peck ably writes about tragedy and the humorous aspects of growing up, making this a truly compelling glimpse of a way of life that will fascinate listeners." --Publishers Weekly

Twelve year old Rob is growing up on a dirt-poor farm in Vermont in the 1930's. His parents have become Shakers and their way of life and values make for some interesting listening and discussion. In the two books (A Day No Pigs Would Die and the sequel A Part of the Sky), Rob faces the anguish of loss and learns lifelong lessons about family love and a caring community.

Out of a rare American tradition, sweet as hay, grounded in the gentle austerities of the Book of Shaker, and in the Universal countryman's acceptance of birth, death, and the hard work of wresting a life from the land comes this haunting novel of a Vermont farm boyhood.

In the daily round of his thirteenth year, as the seasons turn and the farm is tended, the boy -- whose time is the only-yesterday of Calvin Coolidge, whose people are the Plain People living without "frills" in the Shaker Way -- becomes a man.

That is all, and it is everything. The boy is mauled by Apron, the neighbor's ailing cow whom he helps, alone, to give birth. The grateful farmer brings him a gift -- a newborn pig. His father at first demurs ("We thank you, Brother Tanner," said Papa, "but it's not the Shaker Way to take frills for being neighborly. All that Robert done was what any farmer would do for another.") but is persuaded. Rob keeps the pig, names her, and gives her his devotion ... He wrestles with grammar in the schoolhouse. He hears rumors of sin. He is taken -- at last -- to the Rutland Fair. He broadens his heart to make room even for Baptists. And when his father, who can neither read nor cipher, whose hands are bloodied by his trade, whose wisdom and mastery of country things are bred in the bone, entrusts Rob with his final secret, the boy makes the sacrifice that completes his passage into manhood.

All is told with quiet humor and simplicity. Here are lives lived by earthy reason -- in a novel that, like a hoedown country fiddler's tune, rings at the same time with both poignancy and cheer.

About the Author: Robert Newton Peck comes from generations of Yankee farmers. Like the Vermont folk he writes about in his novel, he was raised as a boy in the Shaker Way, which endured even after the sect itself had died out. Its view of life is embodied in the character of his young protagonist's father, who believed that a faith is more blessed when put to use than when put to word: "A man's worship counts for naught, unless his dog and cat are the better for it."