the low-grading rather than high-grading of timber. (Low-grading is also called "restoration forestry" since it takes out the worst trees and leaves the best ones in place to reproduce.) We soon learn through Bolgiano that not all foresters are "cut from the same board" anymore. Another of Bolgiano's themes is the non-depleting use of Appalachian forests. She takes us along in tow as she visits old-timers who show her their secret ginseng patches; we learn not only how to find but how to make ginseng patches and how to market ginseng. Legal forestland preservation is another Bolgiano theme, and it's a block she's personally been around. Here again both economic and personal questions impinge as she leads us through options like land trusts, easements, and entails. Not all her themes are pleasant, though. With her we visit a chipmill and a strip-mine. We see the pathetic use of strip-mines in southwestern Virginia as sites for newly-introduced western elk, apparently as a consolation prize to local hunters. (Old Olaus Murie must be turning over in his grave.) Withal, Bolgiano has written another fine book. It's good forestry, good history, and good writing. —Paul Salstrom Ed Davis. J Was So Much Older Then. Santa Fe: Disc Us Books Inc., 2001. Trade paperback. $17.95. Princeton native Ed Davis should be a somewhat familiar name to enthusiasts of Appalachian literature, as his poetry is included in Wild Sweet Notes, the West Virginia poetry anthology published in 2000. It turns out that Davis is also a fine, if late blooming, writer of prose fiction as well. Í Was So Much Older Then is a remarkably clear and compelling snapshot of southern West Virginia as seen through the eyes of a young boy in the late fifties and through most of the sixties. Davis establishes his socio-economic context in a beautifully laconic opening paragraph, which surely but subtly hints at the emotional trauma to come: Kersey, West Virginia, was a dirty town in 1959. In September of that year I was seven, and Mom, Dad and I lived in a room in the old hotel near the Trailways Bus Station across from the Norfolk and Western Railway yard where idle cars sat, their black coal glittering in the 80 sunshine. The taxi dispatcher's office was in the hotel; my dad drove for Coalfield Cab that year. He'd driven for Trailways, Greyhound and even the local bus line, so with taxis, he was on his way down. Though the circumstances of his life could easily lead to a sensationalized characterization, Davis's portrait of young Danny Cahill is winningly understated. He lives in a roach-infested dump with his mother, who frequently endures savage beatings from his errant father. His closest friend is an old, boozy prostitute. Yet Davis steadfastly refuses to reduce Danny to victim-hood. He is sensitive and intelligent, and more than capable of making the kind of vigilant observations that amount to a self-education. As Danny moves hesitantly toward adolescence he is equal turns romantic and realistic. Davis deserves much credit for having both sides of Danny emerge naturally from Danny's own eager yet timorous encounters with the world: I was really getting hot; she was, too. Sweat trickled down her cheeks, but I didn't think it was just the attic that was making me want to run back down the stairs. Her dance was making me feel like I was supposed to do something—but what? Then she stopped. Her arms came down like a butterfly's wings shutting up, and as she looked at her feet, I saw she was more pigeon-toed than I was. And her dress was worn out from a zillion washings, and her neck had dirt-circles on it ... Danny Cahill, despite his inopportune surroundings, grows into a thinking, caring individual, with a little help from a friend. Like a great many teenage boys in the sixties, he stumbles upon a guitar, which alters his destiny forever. Danny sees the Beatles on TV, joins some junior-high talent show bands, and then finds himself a real, working musician...