Two aspects of the triumph of the "bourgeois family" have had a profound effect on society: first is the capricious yearning for the so-called "better life," which has resulted in a highly trained cadre of consumers, and second, an increasing lack of significance attached to the concepts of "place," and family. These two factors have played an important role in a society that has become acclimated to a rather pernicious spiritual condition that theologian, David Schindler, refers to as "homelessness."

Kentucky essayist, poet, and novelist Wendell Berry has given his readers a glimpse of people who lived the "old ways." In six novels and twenty-three short stories Berry has created the Port William membership, a group of neighbors who live along the ridges and "bottoms" south of "the river" in and around Port William, Kentucky, a town that never was yet always existed in our hearts.