Of Time and Chance: A Love Story of the '60s

Unlikely lovers struggle with their relationship against the backdrop of the Vietnam War in Ruth Porter’s latest novel.

A chance meeting between a teenage farm boy and a free-spirited college girl in 1967 becomes a love story that underscores the challenges of the time. Set in rural Vermont over one summer, Of Time and Chance portrays the conflict between unquestioning patriots and a counterculture resisting involvement in the Vietnam War through powerful, understated storytelling and finely drawn characters that resist stereotype.

“I want to stay here with you.” “For just a second, he loved what she said. Then he thought about it. “But I won’t be here.”

She pulled away and looked into his face without saying anything.

“I’ve got a letter from the draft board. I ain’t got a choice. I got to report to them, or they will come and get me. And that means jail.” “You’re not seriously thinking about…”

“I don’t see what else I can do. I’ve always known this was going to happen. You’ve known it too.”

Porter …deftly weaves in a subplot regarding the wise, weary, and still hard-working Nellie’s shifting perspective about the war and growing fears about her declining health and imminent mortality. The novel’s New England rural setting is also well-captured: Crystal experiences a “magical walk in the forest at night” and learns that making hay bales, milking a cow, and camp cooking are not as simple and easy as they initially seem. A beautifully realized depiction of young love, rural life, and the ideological struggles of the era. — Kirkus Reviews

Another unique read from Adamant Vermont based independent book publisher, Bar Nothing Books.

As the granddaughter of Maxwell Perkins, the famous editor of Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ruth Porter has been living and breathing books her whole life. She's also a mother and grandmother, having raised four kids who now have kids of their own; a farmer, having lived on a farm and raised her own food since the 1970s; and a publisher, having started Bar Nothing Press with her husband, Bill, in 2005. Though Bill passed on in 2022, Ruth continues to publish quality fiction with the help of her son Robby.