"Meditative . . . passionate . . . rich with respect for human toil . . . Mr. Crawford is at his best here, detailing the healing and annealing aspect of the repetitive tasks that bring his crop to market in clear-sighted, eloquent prose." -The New York Times

"Superb, quiet...a plainspoken wisdom." -The New Yorker

"This elegant and unsentimental account of how Crawford learned to grow his principal crop, garlic, and what that process has revealed about himself and his place in the world is probing. An eloquent paean to physical effort and to the land he cares for and depends on, his chronicle is a treasure trove of planting lore, from the autumn planting of garlic cloves to the winter-long "hibernation," the sighting of first shoots in spring, the formation of seed stalks in early summer, the harvesting soon after, and the less satisfying process, to him, of selling his produce, including statice and squash, at farmers' markets in Santa Fe and Los Alamos. Crawford's keen observations, penned in well-hewn prose, are as reflectively nurtured and pungently powerful as his crop of choice."-Publishers Weekly

"An evocative book written in clean, often startlingly beautiful prose."-Kirkus