EARTHBOUND-INTRODUCTION

The first edition of Earthbound was assembled during a very different period of my life. At the time, I was working full time, raising a family, and trying to preserve an enormous body of material left behind after the death of my husband, Raymond Evans Ballinger (1938–2005).I knew very little then about publishing, structure, pacing, or the complex process of shaping oral history and memory into a fully realized narrative.

What I did understand was that Raymond had left behind something deeply important.He had spent the last ten years of his life researching and writing Earthbound, gathering oral histories, recordings, family stories, unfinished manuscripts, photographs, and personal reflections rooted in the disappearing farm communities of southern New Jersey during the years surrounding World War II and the profound social changes that followed.

At its heart, Earthbound is not simply a family history. It is the story of a young boy trying to understand the emotional wound left by his mother’s abandonment and the lifelong search for identity, belonging, and meaning that followed.

As I revisited the material years later, I began to understand the book differently. What once felt primarily like the preservation of family memory now seemed increasingly relevant to the larger American experience.

The questions at the center of Raymond’s life—family fracture, masculinity, emotional isolation, identity, displacement, and the loss of rooted communities—felt more contemporary than ever.This second edition grew out of that realization.I wanted to shape the material into a more readable, emotionally immediate, and cohesive narrative while preserving Raymond’s distinctive voice and the oral storytelling tradition from which the book emerged.

The world of Earthbound is one that has largely disappeared: small farms, horses, migrant labor, postwar uncertainty, changing expectations for men and women, and communities transformed by suburban development and modern life. Yet the emotional questions within that world remain remarkably familiar.

Raymond’s life unfolded across many paths. He was, at different times, an actor, teacher, printer, cabdriver, horse breeder, farmer, husband, and father. Beneath it all remained the same question:How do we reconcile the lives we inherit with the lives we attempt to create for ourselves?

After Raymond’s death, he left behind beautifully written finished material, raw manuscripts, recordings, photographs, research, and invaluable family histories.

This second edition of Earthbound is the result of bringing those pieces together into a fuller and more complete telling of his story.

Part memoir and part oral history, Earthbound is ultimately a story about family, memory, identity, loss, resilience, and the changing American experience.

— Babette Ballinger