Marce Catlett

Port William

by Wendell Berry

In the newest novel in the Port William series, Wendell Berry’s beloved protagonist Andy Catlett tells the inspiring story of his grandfather, Marce Catlett, to his own children and grandchildren, and gives them a key to their place on the settled land they all love

Andy Catlett’s story begins as his grandfather, Marce Catlett, rises in the dark to go from his farm, by horseback and train, to Louisville for the sale of his tobacco crop at the auction house. The price paid for each year’s crop is determined and destroyed by the power of a single buyer, James B. Duke. This year is especially grim since the price offered to each grower is less than the expense of bringing the crop to market. A year’s worth of labor is lost.

Marce returns to his family determined to discover some way to proceed. Many of his fellow farmers lack the resiliency and resourcefulness to continue, and the end for them is nearing. But only with the help of other neighbors and growers can a way be found that protects the farmers and keeps these rural families vital and in place.

The power and depth of this story—and of the many stories within the Port William Membership—resonate with love, memory, kindness, and a sense of eternity. In Marce Catlett, celebrated author Wendell Berry brings to life a character that the devoted readers of the series will cherish. This moving story is a testament to the goodwill that lives within the human heart and a stirring reminder that standing up for what we believe in is always a cause worth fighting for.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Nature, Literary Fiction, Agriculture, Audiobook, Novels

153 pages, Hardcover

First published October 7, 2025

About the author

Wendell Berry is a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet. He was born August 5, 1934 in Henry County, Kentucky where he now lives on a farm. The New York Times has called Berry the "prophet of rural America."

Reviews

[Angela M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much of this short novel portrays what readers of Berry’s Port William stories have come to know and love : the legacy of the land, of the farming life, of family, of community and so much more carried forward through generations by the stories kept and told and retold. A quiet place and time in many respects, but not always an easy place to live as life doles out the good and the bad, as it does no matter where or when . The determination and steadfastness of Marce Catlett in the face of adversity is the stuff this place is made of and the stuff that the Catlett’s share from one generation to the next . It’s beautifully told as I have come to expect from Wendell Berry. While he does a great job of illustrating that the farming life is not easy, I have to admit that I there were too many details of the planting and preparing the tobacco crop than I was interested in, reading like a non fiction manual to me. It probably would have been 5 stars if not for that. Berry fans will love the writing and the message.

I received a copy of this from the publisher through Edelweiss.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a book that at times feels like a lament for the passing of a golden time in history, Wendell Berry has written Andy Catlett’s reminiscence of his family’s life, especially over the past 100+ years since the day Marce Catlett sold his tobacco crop and received nothing to bring home to his waiting family. This is the story of life on small family farms in tobacco country in Kentucky, life around Port William. It’s the story of hard work, dedication to family and neighbors, sharing success and failure, living with the vagaries of the natural world. Above all it is about family and place, the land itself.

Berry is very much a part of this novel, occasionally speaking in his own voice about things that concern him, but they are the things that concern any and all who have been small family farmers in what has become now a mechanized, impersonal business existing on large, even huge scales. Andy (and Berry) acknowledge real and important reasons for the decline of tobacco itself, but separate that from the importance of the farming culture, the closeness of family and community and their combined closeness to the land.

The writing is as always with Berry excellent and powerful. There are sections given over to descriptions of growing and production of tobacco leaves for sale that provide somewhat more than I care to know but do prove just how much work and skill these farmers put into their crops, year in and year out. It also shows the importance of friends and neighbors. While this may not be my favorite of Berry’s books emotionally, I’m finding that it has an intensity and love for its subject that is growing on me. I believe it is an important addition to the Port William canon.

Rating 4.5 rounded to 5*

Thank you to Counterpoint Press and NetGalley for an eARC of this book. This review is my own.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a hybrid novel/essay/reminiscence written as fiction in the persona of Andy Catlett in old age. A lament for the loss of an old way of life that lost out to "progress", and the realization that there's nothing he can do. Berry steps into the pages himself to decry corporate greed and wealthy politicians in it for their own gain. And yes, he mentions Donald Trump. We are also treated to a step by step explanation of farming tobacco, which seemed to bore a few readers, but I grew up in a tobacco farming community in NC, so "setting", "topping", " stripping" and "curing" tobacco were familiar terms to me.

With each new book published by Wendell Berry, I hold my breath it's not the last. May he write forever.

[Jonathon Crump · Rating 5 out of 5]

In December of 2022, I was working at a coffee shop and reading The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy. In between customer interactions and chores, I’d read the book, which was new at the time and ended up being the great American author’s last work (along with Stella Maris). Though I brought a book to work almost every day, I never received so many comments as I did when reading The Passenger. Customers would tell me they were dying to start the book, talk about other books by McCarthy, or ask me if I thought it would be his last. All these interactions felt like a testament to how significant McCarthy, who died the next year in 2023, was to literature. Despite how flooded our culture is with entertainment, that one book elicited dozens of responses. That book was an event.

Now, three years later, there’s another event. Wendell Berry, born just one year after McCarthy in 1934, today released what may very well be his last novel, Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story.

The book is another entry in Berry’s Port William series, which started in 1960 when Berry published Nathan Coulter.

Read the rest of my review on Common Good https://commongoodmag.com/in-marce-ca...

[Megan Gibbs]

To all Port William fans: So exciting, I’ve just discovered A NEW BOOK published this October - had to share with all my GR friends who love this community as much as I do ☺️

[Bekah · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s hard to give Berry 3 stars, but this book didn’t capture me the way his other fiction does.

Berry personally identifies with Andy Catlett and in many ways, this seemed like a bit of a farewell book from Andy (Wendell) to us—which is lovely in its own rite. And for someone who believes Berry is the best writer alive today, it was certainly a precious farewell.

What I didn’t expect was what felt like several essays on Burley Tobacco—its production, the history of its rise and fall, and the generalized personal effect it had on those who called it livelihood. These are absolutely all things in Berry’s wheelhouse, but the lines between fiction and essay were too blurred for me in this volume when I was expecting more of a Port William story and got a treatise instead. (A very well-written treatise, of course.)

[Esta Doutrich · Rating 4 out of 5]

“…Andy’s grief for the things that are lost affirms his love for them, as even the loss of them affirms the bounty by which they once existed, for in this world grief goes hand in hand with gratitude”

I wouldn’t hand this to someone for their first Berry novel, but I suspect it is the most autobiographical of his novels and certainly held a tenderness for me as I closed it, knowing full well it may be the last “new” Berry novel I read. Like Andy, I too give thanks.

[Kaden Kozler · Rating 5 out of 5]

“For in this world grief goes hand in hand with gratitude.”

Mr Wendell looks back on his life and braids a story that brings us all home, so much so that we cannot tell where Andy’s story stops and Berry’s begins. It is an impossible thought to imagine a world without the brain that has brought Port William into the light—but for now, it is enough to bask in the love of the story, and then to go back out to each of our tobacco fields, wherever—and whatever—they may be.

“And so, maybe the right response is to pray for Wendell Berry—not the old Wendell Berry in Henry County right now, but somehow the young Wendell Berry making the decision Andy Catlett once made: to root himself in a place where he could tell us these stories that require of us to be certain kinds of people, with certain kinds of things we must love and certain kinds of things we must do. That young Berry probably knows that he will end up heartbroken. ‘Oh, stand by him,’ we might pray. ‘Let him come home.’” — Russell Moore

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. A poetic meandering of the meaning and importance of the stories we live and then pass on. Berry also elegantly highlights the importance of being truly connected to our work and vocation. Life is not meant to be lived as a cog in a machine.

[Gloriana · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very meh way to start the New Year. For a book titled "the force of a story," there's not much story, and it's not very forceful. The entire book read like a lukewarm bowl of unseasoned and unpleasantly chunky potato soup cooked with too much passive tense and an unhealthy longing to live in the past.

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Wendell Berry and the Port William stories, but this novel was a bit of a letdown. It is more a novella and it strikes me as underdeveloped. There is a long excursus into the harvesting of tobacco. It also reiterates a lot of Berry’s beliefs about local community, culture, agriculture, and corporatism. There is far more musing and reflection rather than engagement between characters.

[Carol (Reading Ladies) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the beginning (histfic) until it became nonfiction and preachy. Very confused about whether this is supposed to be fiction or nonfiction.

[Michele Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a lovely combination of essay and novel. It read as though Andy and Wendell were one and the same. This wasn’t really “Marce Catlett” - but the impact a generational story has on the people yet to come. I always join the lament of the loss of “convivial work” alongside Mr. Berry and hope to always add more side-by-side labor to my own children’s stories after reading his work.

[Jessie Wittman]

What a unique blend of essay and story! It defies genre, but I think that made it a bit plodding for me to read. The more fictional and in-scene moments were the ones I enjoyed most. Read it for the scene of Marce on his horse in the pre-dawn and for a the description of the art of producing a tobacco crop in 1940s with the camaraderie of family and community.

[Jeff Hoffmeyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like David’s Psalm 27, this latest Port William story has the feel and form of being authored by a man who is perhaps near the end of his life of prayer, poetry, and work. The concatenation of these things is as prominent as ever in this dithyrambic story of Andy Catlett, Berry’s autobiographical kin. The novel’s title says it all - stories have an unparalleled force in our lives, but only if we allow them their due authority to counter the hegemony of greed and materialism. Berry might write another Port William novel, just like the Boss might go on tour again next summer. For me, whether he does or not is relatively insignificant. What matters most is living the the force of my own story, a story which is “mine” (like Andy’s) only in the acknowledgment of the sacrifice, longing, and lament that is its ground.

[Holly Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this world grief goes hand in hand with gratitude.

I certainly hope that this is not the last treasure we receive from Wendell Berry!

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I hope there is more, this would be a fitting end to Port William. It's about how a a failed tobacco sale powerfully shaped the community over time, bringing people together to fight for its own identity and survival. And of course, it's also about the things Berry always writes about.

How greed helped cause "the traditional subsistence economies of households and neighborhoods" to be "supplanted by the global economy of extraction, consumption, and waste."

How the countryside was once full of life, but how country people were "exiled from their homelands, their histories and memories, their self-subsistent local economies, thus becoming more ignorant and dependent than people ever have been before."

While I mostly feel sadness for what I know to be true for so many communities across the country and because I live in a place whose history is mostly unknown to me, I appreciate how Berry calls us to gratitude in the end: "Andy's grief for the things that are lost affirms his love for them, as even the loss of them affirms the bounty by which they once existed, for in this world grief goes hand in hand with gratitude."

[Aaron Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was not what I was hoping it would be but it is always a pleasure to return to Port William. It was more about the history of tobacco farming with some fiction around it to place it in Port William. Very interesting though.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

“For in this world grief goes hand in hand with gratitude.”

This is a book about labor and vocation and generations and community and farewells. I don’t want to say goodbye to Port William, but Wendell Berry has ensured that many of us will carry the story beyond his own telling of it.

[Brendan Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This was (of course) an elegantly written, poignant lament about the loss of an old world, which characterizes most of Berry’s writing. There’s been speculation that this is Berry’s “final work,” and if it is, I can see how it might effectively capture his parting thoughts about the state of the world, all of which are rather sad and seemingly defeated. Though it’s comprised of fictional characters from Port William, It contains some of the most succinct statements of Berry’s ideas:

“The American story so far . . . Has been the fairly continuous overpowering of the instinctive desire for settling and homemaking by the forces of unsettling: the westward movement, land greed, money hunger, false economy. The industrial replacement of neighborhood by competition and technology moves everything worthy of love out of reach.”

This book, while technically fiction, blurs and bleeds into nonfiction/memoir, in that the character of Andy becomes almost indistinguishable from Berry himself - a boy who grew up among a farming legacy who left home, became a writer/intellectual, and eventually returned to the land of his forebears determined to resurrect the old agrarian ways, only to now come to the end of his life reflecting on his failure and the inevitable collapse of the world. In that way, this is maybe the saddest and most despairing of Berry’s works in my estimation. He is left with the eschatological hope of all believers in a world renewed and restored by love to its original beauty on the other side of all things, but until then things are pretty bleak.

I’m still sorting out how I feel about this novel (is it a novel? I think it’s really an essay). Berry lapses into long rhapsodies about the minutiae of growing tobacco crops, and these go on for a while. But overall the power of this book is in Berry’s matchless prose and his reflection on something that has mattered and meant to him more than most people could fathom. He loves things with such a fierce love, things that have ceased to be loved by most people, and because of that his grief is all the more terrible.

[Molly Grimmius · Rating 4 out of 5]

The newest novel from Wendell Berry’s fictional town of Port Williams… though unlike his other novels this one feels heavy essay with just loose tie to fictional characters… which he admits too in his acknowledgement… a lot focuses on the truth of tobacco farmers in the 1900s to current… from their hard work of growing an all consuming crop to earning barely a pittance to the golden era or raising tobacco because of “laws” put into place to the decline of small family farming economy because of industrialization…. It follows the the story of Marce Catlett to Wheeler Catlett(lawyer/farmer) to Andy Catlett (writer/farmer). I learned from a friend that Wendell Berry is seen through Andy and Wheeler is likeWendel’s dad.
It the story of change in a country and how that changed so affected the beautiful economy of working together on a land as a family and not being so dependent. It is the story of seeing something beautiful in the work you do and still choosing to do it. It is the story of your family and your history that impacts the story of your current life. I really especially liked thinking about this question… the force of a story… the stories of our past and who they were and where they take us or do we abandon them all together.

I like Wheeler’s character a lot so I appreciated hearing about his road to being a lawyer. And there was some beautiful passages throughout and this longing for a time that was..

As always… Wendell Berry paints a beautiful idealized picture of farming life and though yes he paints the truth of hard days and money… I think he often romanticizes what it was and would be the end all be all if we all went back to it. I hear his call for community and being more independent but there is no perfectionism on this side of Heaven.

Excited to book talk this one.

[Adam Callis · Rating 4 out of 5]

One reviewer said this reads more like an epilogue to the Port William series rather than a new novel, and I have to agree. The opening is great fiction. The rest is an essay. And that's fine, because the same could be said of many of Berry's works of fiction. They all carry his voice.

As a tobacco farmer in my childhood, the book's tobacco-focus definitely resonated with me, even if my experiences were different than his. I definitely connect with Berry's sorrow in seeing a world be lost. I've seen the tail-end of the tragedy he writes about, as more and more tobacco farmers are stepping away for good. And beyond the amish community, the kind of subsistence farming lifestyle he remembers seems beyond reach.

What I rarely seem to get in his writings is a genuine sense of hope or instruction for living in the world that remains. I have many friends who have sought to embrace elements of this lost lifestyle to the best of their ability, and I see a hope in their efforts. But Berry's writings always seem to be more focused on the world that's been lost than on the one that we've been left with. The one exception is Jayber Crow, which is still my favorite of all his works.

At any rate, I'm grateful for the book and for all of his writings, and I sense that this will be the last.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fascinated by this book in so many ways. The story of family told across generations, of community built around the delicate raising of tobacco (I had no idea how much labor and artistry was involved), and the way the mechanism of farming changed the entire landscape of community. I have lived parts of this story as the daughter of a generational farmer. I have lived more of it as the larger story it tells of exile and trying to rebuild life in a land not yet redeemed.

One book review said this book was angry. I think instead it is a lament. Maybe there is some anger in it, but mostly grief in the remembrance of a world lost to us. It’s a world where community mattered, where life couldn’t be lived without one’s neighbor, where so much was broken but love abounded, and where duty mattered. It makes me long even more for the new creation but also wonder how to regain some of the beauty that has been lost in the modern age. So much to ponder.

Favorite line in the book? “In those days nobody knew that he was a boy who belonged to a story. In those days he did not know it himself.”

[Katrina Swartzentruber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give this a 3.75, because it was good, but probably won’t be a go-to Wendell Berry book for me personally. This story leaned toward agrarian themes rather than community themes, and I prefer the latter in Berry’s books. It also almost crossed the line to essay, which wasn’t my favorite. But the grief and lament that this story presented were familiar and gave words to things I did not have words for.

“As he has come to know, Andy's grief for the things that are lost affirms his love for them, as even the loss of them affirms the bounty by which they once existed, for in this world grief goes hand in hand with gratitude.”

I think it is a privilege to be among a generation able to read Wendell Berry’s books as soon as they are published.

[Micah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part rural history, part fiction, part autobiography, part economic dissertation, this short work from Wendell Berry feels like a summary of his decades of perspective in an autobiographical fiction that ties together generations of his Port Williams Catletts and explains the economic downturn and the philosophy behind it. While there isn’t much new here, a fictional reminiscence on the multigenerational effect of agricultural policy changes might be the most compelling way to advance a reader’s understanding, concern, and investment in localized economic concerns and their impact on community.

[J. Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love how reading Wendell Berry shapes my mind and opens my eyes. When I opened this novel and read the first lines I had to take a breath, let my spirit slow enough to enter into a different pace of life, a world of nature and connectedness and generational ties. I returned from my sojourn on a rural Kentucky tobacco farm with more information than I ever asked for about growing tobacco and also a sweet sense of peace.
Berry's prose is profound and insightful, whole books could be written to explain what he says in one line. Thankful for the gentle way that his stories teach me how to live.


Thanks to Edelweiss & the publisher for the advance copy.

[Jenifer Bishop]

You can’t help but experience a great yearning for a past and history that is yours, but not quite, when reading Wendell Berry. It often produces in me a sadness for my unsettledness. Yet interwoven through the book is an expression of gratitude in the midst of accumulating griefs and readily changing times. It remains to me a joyful nod to companionship and community and to the beauty and goodness of not forsaking the “hard” for convenience and efficiency. Read after Brave New World and before beginning Against the Machine. I predict a common thread in the three.

[Noel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Possibly even 5 stars after some time. This is an interesting new little book from Berry. It read to me much more like an essay than fiction, which for me is a positive because I don't always enjoy his fiction. As I read in other reviews, this also, unfortunately, has the feel of being perhaps the last novel we will see from this great Kentucky writer. If so, he has ended on a colossal note. Marce Catlett simply yet forcefully illustrates the rise and fall of tobacco farming in Kentucky and the implications of this.

[Daniel Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading a Wendell Berry book feels like visiting family from bygone years. It transports me back in time to a Kentucky culture that I grew up knowing from my grandparents and great-grandparents. This book may not be for everyone due to its technical explanation of the production and sale of burley tobacco, but I can see those small acreage hillside farms and envision the life he writes about. It leaves me nostalgic for a way of life that is extinct in our highly mechanized, industrialized, commercialized, and technologically advanced world.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

“…there was little talk. They had not much that they wanted to hear themselves say.”

“He then felt in his heart one of the hardest of human sufferings: the wish to help his friend more than he knew he could.”

“…intimately loved and therefore known, intimately known and therefore loved.”

“His grief for the things that are lost confirms his love for them…for in this world grief goes hand in hand with gratitude.”

•••

4.5⭐️