Building Frame/Courtesy: Lou Ureneck

The absence of Paul’s oldest son is felt during the young man’s tour of duty in Iraq. It seems that life outside the woods has a way of inserting itself, as does a past that did its damage in Lou and Paul’s lives. We learn that the brothers lived in 17 different homes while growing up in New Jersey, and the house they occupied for the longest period, four years, was ultimately foreclosed upon. Their father abandoned their mother early on, and their later stepfather’s alcoholism brings a new set of troubles, all of which conspires to steal some of the innocence of early childhood from their lives.
     Building a permanent home, a place for their grown children to gather, is their attempt at escaping the complications that have interfered over time and at returning to something more basic. Some of the most vivid passages come from the author’s recollections of first discovering nature as a young boy, exploring the littorals of the Jersey shore, netting blue-claw crabs, and longing even that early on for an untouched landscape that preceded him. This pull to the outdoors is what Thoreau had in mind when he described the child’s urge to begin the world anew, to live in a sense like the earliest members of the human race. Teaching at a city university with his only connection to nature taking the form of walks through a manicured public park, Ureneck sees the Maine wilderness as the place where he can begin his life anew.