Planting by the Moon provides a rollicking yet poignant portrait of rural hardscrabble America. Stillman's perspective on life in a backwater hamlet, as caught in essays and occasional poems, is refreshingly different from other books on rural life. He is the things he writes of-logger, firefighter, horseman, cabin dweller, loiterer at the general store. These writings bring us past romanticized depictions of rural village life to provide...