All My Born Days

The Shipes were ruled by the forces of nature: bitter cold winters; a flood that washed over their West Virginia home; and a forest fire that surrounded their house in Maryland and had Ken and his family flat on their bellies, gasping for breath. Ken remembers humorous incidents from his days in a country schoolhouse, and how he almost lost his life when his new bicycle ran off a mountain road. And he writes about World War II, which snatched up his brothers and critical farm helpers, leading to failure of the Shipes' sharecropping venture and subsequently his own call to duty as a Marine in the Korean War.