On February 12, 2011, I rated this book based on decades-old memories then. This is a review of the Audible version ten years later, a very long time after the first time I read this.

This book attempts to portray what it felt like to live in small town Illinois in the summer of 1928. At the center is the character of Douglas Spaulding who stands in for the author as a young boy during that time. His family members and other members of the community recur in the different short stories.

In these stories themes of history and discovery and loss turn up repeatedly. The stories are reflective of the time in which they were written and the time and were written to appeal readers of those times. The book's title refers to the home-bottled refreshment harvested in late spring and fermented over summer which the characters associate with the memories of those seasons. Bradbury is known as a speculative fiction author but there's really only one story that's what I would consider fantasy in this group. Some are comic, even slapstick, and some are just faintly nostalgic. That is not to say that these are light stories. There's a fair amount of death that goes on in this little town that happens just as it did in real life. These deaths and the near brushes with death weigh upon the main character's mind as he tries to understand what's in store for him.

The wording he uses is quaintly old fashioned and the character in it are utterly conventional so this is not a place to look for diverse, unconventional representation. At times the writing did veer toward the sentimental and perhaps the preachy. But for me these were outweighed by the many passages of luminous prose style, purple, but not off-putting in my opinion. Listening to this description of Green Town, Illinois of nearly a hundred years ago was an enjoyable refuge for me. And I found there were enough interesting ideas there to maintain my interest. The tales made me remember those stories by Ray Bradbury which happen to conjure up that sweet, sad wistfulness, such as the ones I found the most memorable in The Martian Chronicles. But just as bottles of dandelion wine do not pretend to be wine from vintage grapes, these deftly crafted tales can be appreciated for what they are, without pretensions. I was interested to see that he'd written a couple of sequels taking the description of Douglas Spaulding's life beyond his childhood which I might want to pick up some time too.