In Kiltumper

Niall Williams with Christine Breen

A well-lived life is the best kind of life if it brings daily fulfillment and contentment. Married couple Williams and Breen have built such a life in rural Kiltumper, County Clare, Ireland, raising a family and building community, all the while tending a garden and writing books. The centerpiece of this marvelous book is their own Irish garden. For them, gardening is not a seasonal pastime, but a year-round, lifelong journey connecting them with the rhythm of country life, with nature itself. Their journal extracts reveal a spiritual reverence for planting, growing and harvesting, while Christine’s black and white sketches of flowers and vegetables evoke the field work of early naturalists. Like other writers imbued by nature – Wendell Berry, Thomas Merton, Robert Frost and homesteaders Scott and Helen Nearing – the authors find joy in self-sufficiency and simplicity. It is indeed a well-lived life as portrayed by In Kiltumper.
Bloomsbury Publishing 304 pages / $27 / 2021