ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, February 4, 1996               TAG: 9602020081
SECTION: BOOKS                    PAGE: F-4  EDITION: METRO 
                                             TYPE: BOOK REVIEW 
SOURCE: MARY ANN JOHNSON BOOK PAGE EDITOR 

BOOKMARKS

MEMORY'S GLASS.

By William Fox Conner. Pocahontas Press. $12.95.

"Memory's Glass" is a reflective collection of essays by William Fox Conner who grew up on a farm in Botetourt County and attended Roanoke College. Although he now lives in Illinois where he teaches writing at Principia College, his subject in these pages is life in the rural swells of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The railroad was a strong presence in Conner's childhood. His grandfather, an N&W engineer, was "the first man to drive a diesel locomotive into Roanoke." Conner witnessed the laying of track across his family's farm when the spur line from Cloverdale to the cement plant was built.

Automobiles, too, assume prominence. These were the years when cars were individual and gave their drivers identity as well as transportation.

Reminiscences include hunting grouse on the south side of Tinker Mountain with his father, smelling his mother's lilac-scented hand cream, teaching his younger brother to fly a kite, cleaning the milking parlor, riding in a speeding car that crashed.

With innocent simplicity and poetic phrasing, Conner records all of this and more. "Memory's Glass" is not only a record of Conner's youth but a human history of the '50s in this part of the Valley of Virginia.

Bookmarks is a regular feature of the book page that will focus on books, writers and literary events of local and regional interest and importance.

In the Jan. 21 Bookmarks, the publishing information was omitted. The name of the book was: "That Shining Place" by Simone Poirier-Bures. Oberon Press. No price listed.

LENGTH: Short :   41 lines