Carla Panciera - BARNFLOWER

Westerly native Carla Panciera presents Barnflower: A Rhode Island Farm Memoir. This collection of stories about the bond between father and daughter has been a customer favorite in 2023. This event is free and open to all, but we ask that you kindly RSVP so that we may plan accordingly. See you there!

In this luminous collection, Carla Panciera creates a love letter to her father. These unforgettable stories are by turns touching, tender, and hilarious, and provide a profound look at a lost American way of life. 

— Holly Robinson, author of Chance Harbor and Folly Cove

A famous farmer is a farmer nonetheless. His bull might have been featured in Esquire Magazine, his name might be known by cattle breeders all over the world, but back home, the cows still need to be milked, the corn still has to be harvested, the chores still need to be completed before the end of another long day. And someone has to help him, even as she tries to balance her role on the family farm with her life as a teenager in the 1970’s. Carla Panciera spent years with her father and his famous herd traveling from county fair to county fair, and answering the same question: “Are you Aldo Panciera’s daughter?” But these connected stories are based on the real man and his efforts to make a living at what he loved. Barnflower is about the bond between a father and daughter and their love for the kind of life they shared, a kind of life that is both a critical and a vanishing part of our history.