FREEMAN, Castle (William), Jr. 1944-

PERSONAL: Born November 26, 1944, in San Antonio, TX; son of Castle William (a business executive) and Janet (a homemaker; maiden name, Cunningham) Freeman; married Alice Chaffee (an artist and designer), July 12, 1969; children: Alexander C., Sarah S. Ethnicity: "White." Education: Columbia University, B.S. (cum laude), 1968. Hobbies and other interests: American and European history, natural history (especially botany and entomology).

ADDRESSES: Agent—Christina Ward, Christina Ward Literary Agency, P.O. Box 505, North Scituate, MA 02060.

CAREER: Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA, technical writer, 1970-72; Stephen Greene Press, Brattleboro, VT, editor, 1976-80; Country Journal, copy editor, Manchester, VT, 1981-87; freelance writer and editor, 1987—. New Brook Fire Department, Newfane, VT, member.

MEMBER: Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Award for New England Writers, St. Botolph's Club Foundation, 1993.

WRITINGS:

The Bride of Ambrose (short stories), Soho Press (New York, NY), 1987.

Spring Snow (essays), Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1996.

Judgment Hill (novel), University Press of New England (Hanover, NH), 1997.

My Life and Adventures (novel), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Author of the column "Farmer's Calendar," Old Farmer's Almanac, 1981—. Contributor of articles and stories to periodicals, including New England Review, Ontario Review, Southwest Review, Yankee, Harrowsmith, Atlantic Monthly, Harvard, Massachusetts Review, and Shenandoah.

ADAPTATIONS: Two of the author's writings have been adapted for the Puppet Theater.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A collection of short stories "unified by common characters, setting, and themes."

SIDELIGHTS: Castle Freeman, Jr. told CA: "My Life and Adventures is the fictional reminiscences of the narrator, Mark Noon, as he takes up his inheritance: a derelict hill farm in an isolated community in rural Vermont. Time is the late sixties and early seventies. Noon recounts how he got to make the township his home, got to know its people, its nature, its history, its lore; how he found work, friends, love.

"The story is told by way of Noon's reflections on a range of topics having to do with Vermont and present-day America in general—topics personal, political, historical, literary, philosophical. It is also told in alternation with three kinds of other matter: entries from the diary of the predecessor on Noon's property, a busted hill farmer; tabular and statistical content (made up) about the economy, population, geography, and fauna of the vicinity; and Noon's recollections of his career before he came to Vermont, in particular his darkly comic account of a disastrous year working on behalf of shadowy forces in a forbidding, chaotic, Latin American port city (unnamed)."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, July 1, 2002, Joanne Wilkinson, review of My Life and Adventures, p. 1820.

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 1997, review of Judgment Hill, p. 1049; June 1, 2002, review of My Life and Adventures, p. 756.

Library Journal, September 15, 1997, Barbara Maslekoff, review of Judgment Hill, p. 101; June 15, 1998, review of Judgment Hill, p. 132; September 1, 2002, Cheryl L. Conway, review of My Life and Adventures, p. 211.

New York Times Book Review, February 1, 1998, Martha E. Stone, review of Judgment Hill, p. 18.

Publishers Weekly, July 8, 2002, review of My Life and Adventures, p. 31.

World and I, January, 1998, review of Judgment Hill, p. 282.*