Sticks, Stones & Songs: The Corey Story

In 1937, with the cash in his pocket, Arthur Corey purchases a grange hall, a derelict, drafty, long-deserted building destined to become the family residence into which babies, including the author, are born, one after another, after another. These children learn lessons via the school of hard knocks, transform throw-aways into tools, and become all too familiar with an outhouse where catalogs are used instead of toilet paper.

Arthur paid the auctioneer, buttoned his threadbare tweed over...