The Past Leads a Life of Its Own is a compelling collection of stories centered around one boy's childhood in the rural midwest in the 1950s, his love of nature, his family, and their often nomadic existence.

"Going through these pages quickly would be like chug-a-lugging a jar of honey fresh from the comb, or wolfing down a slow-cured, hickory-smoked country ham. It is a rich and complexly flavored work of fiction, a book to be savored."—Harper Barnes, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Set against the rhythms of nature, Fields's 16 luminous, interrelated stories celebrate a boy's coming-of-age. . . . The beauty of these deeply felt stories lies in their spare, ear-perfect language and in quiet epiphanies."—Publishers Weekly

"[A] beautifully subtle work. . . . Here are a series of vignettes, each capturing some moment in nature, poetic and ethereal. . . . [They] are like stones skipping on water, capturing the struggles of a family leaving one way of life behind for another, Fields remembers the feeling of a time and a place gone forever."—Library Journal

Wayne Fields is professor of English and director of American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. His books include Union of Words: A History of Presidential Eloquence and What the River Knows: An Angler in Midstream.