The book chronicles the final year of the small farming village New Burlington, Ohio, before it was flooded by the construction of a reservoir.
Baskin went to work as a journalist when he was 21, covering, among other things, Civil Rights demonstrations in the furniture towns of Piedmont North Carolina, including the notable Lexington riot of 1963 when one man died and Baskin's companion, photographer Art Richardson, was shot in the back.
[1] He worked for a series of daily newspapers from Asheville and Greensboro in North Carolina to Dayton, Ohio.
In 1972, Baskin was named an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow, using the grant to move into an abandoned farmhouse and became the last resident of the farming village of New Burlington, Ohio, before it was flooded by the construction of a reservoir.
[3][4] In 2006, the book was adopted into a play by Jonathan Walker and performed at the Chautauqua Institute featuring Emmy Award-winning actress Sada Thompson.