Country Living Barefoot Summers: Reflections on Home, Family, and Simple Pleasures

Faith Andrews Bedford, a favorite with Country Living’s readers, captures the magic of summer, childhood, and home in a moving collection of essays.

For years, the readers of Country Living have adored Faith Andrews Bedford’s evocative stories, featured in her beloved bi-monthly column, “Kids in the Country.” This enchanting collection invites everyone to join Bedford as she movingly recaptures the modest triumphs of children, the importance of family traditions, and the simple pleasures of country life. In “Sister Dresses,” Faith’s mother finds three special Easter outfits “all exactly the same,” delighting her daughters. “Time & a Bottle” tells of Faith’s girlhood walks along the beach, where she hoped that the sea glass she collected “had come from a perfume bottle thrown into the water a century ago by an elegant lady in France.” Every one of these essays explores the beauty in the ordinary and the meaning in the everyday.