A Fable
by Don Mitchell
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1979
This is the story of a shepherd and a lamb. Using symbols as familiar as the Old Testament, Don Mitchell has written a contemporary fable that probes basic beliefs about life and love, good and evil.
The most powerful stories have always been simple ones, and this is a simple story. A shepherd husbands his flocks and watches the seasons pass. Each year a new crop of lambs is conceived, born, nurtured. To what purpose? That men may eat meat. The shepherd himself slaughters a lamb, and eats, nourishing his body. The cycle begins anew.
This natural chain of events provokes many questions. What is the nature of love between man and animal, man and man? Does life entail expending life? Can slaughter be sacramental? What is the cutting edge that divides responsibility from guilt? And finally -- what, in man and beast alike, transcends the flesh?
In his fable of shepherd and lamb, Don Mitchell bring nourishment to all who ponder the means and ends to man's survival, and the quality of love.
Don Mitchell raises sheep on a small farm in Vermont. He is the author of two novels -- ThumbTripping and Four-Stroke.
"This remarkable book, in the rhythms specific to prose, does what is more often accomplished by poetry: it brings reality into the firm grip of sustained metaphor and holds it steady in the strong light of informed imagination."
--Denise Levertov
"Imagine a good story, the essence of the Twenty-Third Psalm, a readable meditation, and, by the way, a book on the husbandry of sheep, and you understand The Souls of Lambs. This is an extraordinary book and a very good one."
--Noel Perrin
"It touches a metaphysical nerve that is in all of us whether we know it or not."
-- Tom Savage, author of Bargain with God