A Sandstone Farmhouse grew out of his own life and especially out of his relationship to a six-room sandstone farmhouse on an eighty-acre farm near Plowville, Pennsylvania. He lived there from 1945, when he was thirteen, until 1950, when he left to attend Harvard University. Before living in the farmhouse, the family lived in Shillington, Pennsylvania, eleven miles from the farmhouse. Updike’s mother was born in the house and died there. Several of his novels, including The Centaur (۱۹۶۳) and Of the Farm (۱۹۶۵), and many of his short stories, including those collected in Olinger Stories: A Selection (۱۹۶۴), are in part based on his experiences in and around the sandstone farmhouse. The Joey Robinson in Of the Farm seems to be the same person as the Joey in “A Sandstone Farmhouse.” The story won first prize in the O. Henry Prize Stories competition, appearing in Prize Stories, 1991: The O. Henry Awards, and was also included in The Best American Short Stories, 1991.
