content: Whenever I travel through the hills of SW Wisconsin I keep an eye open for Enoch Wallace's house. Simak has me convinced that it, and its owner, must be real. You cannot read this book without feeling that Enoch is an old, old friend. There is something about this 19th century man's lonely vigil through the centuries that seems right. Only a person so completely human could treat alien visitors with such unstinting hospitality- and humanity. They are just "folks", a might peculiar, but still folks. I can also believe that the old timers back in the hills would not give him up to outsiders if he did exist- not if he minded his own business, not if he belonged there.