Count Their Lives in Womanyears
by Barbara Funderburk
$17.95, paperback, 104 pages
Published: November 2002
ISBN 1-880849-49-6

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In the early twentieth century, the rolling countryside of North Carolina's southern Piedmont region was dotted by farms inhabited by women who measured their lives in "womanyears"—not in the mechanical passage of days, weeks, and months, but in the "subtle meld of season into season with the gentle spiral of life in its folds." As author Barbara Funderburk writes: "A year is much more than a number to them. It is meant to measure the size of things in their own world . . . it's 'the year the big storm came' or 'the year the littlest'un was born' or 'the year Pa died.'"

Every hour severs another link to this not-so-distant, but oh-so-different time. Funderburk notes, "There aren't many of these women left . . .. When [their] generation passes away—and it is quickly, and with a sigh, doing so—a way of life and time will have gone with them." This realization spurred Funderburk to drive into the countryside, find these women and record their stories, which she gives us, for the most part, in their own words.

What emerges in Count Their Lives in Womanyears is the unforgettably rich, organic tapestry of these women's lives. Punctuated with Funderburk's own original paintings, drawings, and sketches, their plainspoken wit, wisdom, and humor merge into an uplifting chorus, a celebration of the beauty of ordinary lives, well lived.