Aunt Arie A Foxfire Portrait Author:Linda Garland Page, Eliot Wigginton Eliot Wigginton, founder and director of the Foxfire Fund, Inc., which has created the phenomenally successful Foxfire Books (based on the people and places and "affairs of plain living" in southern Appalachia), describes the talkative, wise, funny, and utterly charming lady - the phenomenon known as Aunt Arie: — "Of all the people my high school... more » students, my staff members, and I have documented and shared with the outside world since 1966, none has been more warmly embraced than Arie Carpenter. Though she has been dead for years, wherever I go with my students on speaking engagements - be it Alaska, Oklahoma, California, Maine, or wherever - someone will surely come up to one of us and inquire about her health. She is the only person we ever wrote about whose personality was so strong and whose face was so compelling that she literally walked off the pages of The Foxfire Book and into the lives of the millions who read it."
Most of this book is Aunt Arie herself. In her own words, her own inimitable style, she discusses everything from planting, harvesting, and cooking to her thoughts about religion and her feelings about living alone. Also included are testimonials from many who knew her, and a wealth of photographs, most of them never before published. For all who have read and cherished the Foxfire Books, here is a loving portrait of a fondly remembered friend.« less