Moments of ecstatic violation live on, unacknowledged, but making their claim in crippled emotion and an incessant search to master their source. Ahab had his whale, and Ishmael was taken up in the quest. Ishmael was healed by squeezing sperm and thereby learned to name "attainable felicity." Naming is mastery. Mastery is "attainable felicity," and the pure language of nature provides the vocabulary.

This book tells of a journey from terror to mastery by way of farming, and how farming's nature-shaped vocabulary of duties and rituals may heal the deepest wounds.