In New England Literary News (5-14-23), Nina MacLaughlin of the Boston Globe praises Carla Panciera’s memoir Barnflower:
“Rowley writer publishes new memoir of a childhood on a Rhode Island farm
“Rowley-based author, poet, and longtime high school English teacher Carla Panciera grew up on a farm in Westerly, R.I., on “one-hundred acres in the middle of everything and yet completely invisible,” she writes in her new book “Barnflower: A Rhode Island Farm Memoir” (Loom). In 1952, Aldo Panciera bought what would turn out to be a very famous bull, making him a very famous farmer, changing the Holstein breed. Panciera’s respect for him, and the work, is evident on each page. The book illuminates the matter-of-factness of farm life: the smells, the sicknesses, the no-vacation-days hard work of it. And it’s a portrait of childhood, too, the popsicles and puppies and family games, and the other kind of hard work of trying to make sense of the adult world and finding a place in the world. More than anything, it’s a book about the love between father and daughter. Panciera shows that the power of what’s carried in the blood remains, even after the bull has died.”