Stain the Water Clear: A Collection of Rural Pen and Yankee Doodlin' Columns, 1993-2002

For years, readers of Luanne Austin’s “Rural Pen” column in the Daily News-Record have been asking for a compilation of her work. Here it is. “Stain the Water Clear” is a collection spanning 10 years. Her first “Southern Yankee” writings focused on the transplanted life of a young woman who had moved from her native New York to “the South.” “Yankee Doodlin’” continued on this theme, but expanded to family life, relationships and meditations on life. Finally, the “Rural Pen” pieces are those of a writer who has found her voice, addressing a range of topics, from politics to religion, to love and women’s issues, to meditations on nature and spirituality .The name of the column and this book come from William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence”: “And I made a rural pen, And I stain’d the water clear… .”

In addition to Rural Pen, Luanne (Brown) Austin writes religion and feature stories for the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Va. Her columns and articles have won awards from the Amy Foundation and Virginia Press and National Newspaper associations. She and her husband, Kim, have three grown children.