EARTHBOUND

 

​“I held my hands under the thigh of the horse just to keep my hands from freezing. It seemed we were walking for miles. There was a feeling of deadness and dampness along with the cold. There was no house anymore and no mother.  My mother had left us.”​
 

For each of us, there is one event or series of events that shapes the direction of our lives. For the author, Raymond Evans Ballinger, that event occurred at age seven when his mother abandoned her family, leaving  two young sons in the care of her husband. Raymond Evans Ballinger grew up with an obsessive need to understand what there was about him that had allowed his mother to leave him. His life became a journey of exploration, complicated by his deep-seated ties to the land and family home, The Homestead where he was raised.
 

Ballinger became an actor, teacher, photographer, director, and more. He bred horses, married twice, and fathered two sons and a daughter. Ten years before his death in 2005 he began researching Earthbound, interviewing members of his family in a quest to uncover the roots of the man he had become.
 

Part memoir, part oral history, Earthbound is a story of resilience, love, hate, and redemption. Set in the rich farmland of Western New Jersey beginning in 1914, the story is told through the voices of three generations.  Earthbound is  a richly detailed portrait of a society in transition, as small family farms gave way to an increasingly urbanized lifestyle.

The Journey of an American Family........A Portrait of America in Transition

 

Spellbinding in the extreme, Earthbound is a definite page-flipper.