I find myself carried into a world I know nothing about, but it sounds like paradise. Wendell Berry takes me to Port William, an imaginary town set in the middle of a Kentucky like rural area. Never before had the scenes from A River Runs Through It or The Legend of the Fall been inspiring to me. The stories were just that, stories, but Berry makes a similar setting the ideal place to be.
The capstone and namesake story of the book, "Fidelity" is a fantastic, gripping story. The characters, all related in some way, shape or form to the characters in every other story in this compilation. The idea of hard work and community shine forth in these narratives. "Fidelity" combines a fun story with an incredible monologue of social commentary.
The characters are well developed in every story. I do however get mixed up between all the generational crossing. Stories and back-stories play with the time-line, however it becomes difficult to remember which generation you are in.
Overall, a great work. I will continue to read Berry in short story and poems and I will likely pick up a few of his essays as well.