SOURCE: Dieter, William. Review of In Deep: Country Essays, by Maxine Kumin. Smithsonian 18, no. 8 (November 1987): 265-66.

In the following review, Dieter praises Kumin's exploration of the rural experience in In Deep: Country Essays.

How long has it been since you were invited to a farm home in the New Hampshire hills? Quite some time, I'll bet. It was for me. My own homeplace, half a century, half a continent away, has long since gone back to wind and grass and so I was pleased to accept Maxine Kumin's invitation, which will come to you as it did to me, in the form of a handful of essays all nicely stanchioned between the covers of this, [In Deep: Country Essays,] her 15th book.

Kumin and her husband managed to do what the rest of us only threaten—get away to the country. They found the south slope of a...