A novel of New England village life in the years after the American Revolution. It is told by Horace Holyoke, who looks back on his boyhood and on the people of Oldtown, including his friends, relatives and a memorable storyteller, Sam Lawson. Stowe draws on memories of her husband's childhood and her own to portray the church, the kitchen, the schoolroom and the debates over faith. It is valued as a rich, humorous and affectionate record of a vanished way of life.