Like many of us, John Eldon Green lived through the massive changes of the Twentieth Century. Gone is the Albany of his boyhood years -- the forge, the general stores, the two-room schoolhouse, the butcher and barber shops, and the railway station; gone St. Dunstan's University where he graduated in 1947; gone the days when Catholics and Protestants lived in two separate and often warring camps; and gone the era of the community self-sufficiency, when families, churches and neighbourhoods partied together and looked after their own.

All gone, but remembered with both fondness and frankness in this memoir.

During a long pioneering career in the field of Social Services, as a civil servant andDeputy Minister, Green was in frequent contact with Premiers, Ministers, and senior officials, both nationally and on PEI, but also with the poorest of the poor. His dealings withboth groups are recallled with candour and sympathy, and inthe case of the former, with an occasional flash of steel.

The reader will discover here a mix of courageous self-disclosure and penetrating insight into the society, all written with charm and vigour, and adorned with the wisdom of a reflective mind, and much self-effacing wit.

There is toughness here, and much tenderness, especially concerning his wife Mary and their family of seven sons and daughters, and ten grandchildren, who have been the inspiration forhis life.