Trent Preszler’s 'Little and Often' a profound father-son tale of discovery and reconciliation

In Trent Preszler’s insightful, lyrical prodigal-son memoir "Little and Often" (William Morrow, 304 pp., ★★★★ out of four), a telling scene embodies the book’s underlying philosophy. In high school, Preszler got a miserable summer job scraping peeling paint on an old brick barn. He came home the first day sunburned, knuckles bloody and vowing to quit.

“It ain’t going to be easy. Nuthin’ is,” his father told him the next morning driving Preszler back to the barn. Together, they scraped one single brick after another until Preszler got the message – do a little at a time.

If only life were as simple. Estranged from his father since college, when he revealed he was gay, Preszler had left behind his hardscrabble South Dakota cattle-ranch upbringing, earned a doctorate in horticulture at Cornell University and created an enviable viticulture career as CEO of Bedell Cellars, a prominent winery on Long Island’s North Fork. Reconciliation was hopeless.

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Then, in 2014, 38-year-old Preszler got a phone call from his father asking him to come home for Thanksgiving. Reluctantly, he drove cross-country to find his father dying of cancer.

Preszler's one inheritance was his dad’s toolbox. Filled with “thick, battle-scarred” tools, it was a perplexing bequest. Leon Preszler had been a cattle rancher and rodeo champion, a Vietnam veteran awarded a Bronze Star. A tight-lipped, hard-working cowboy, he spoke simple truths, believed in God and getting done what needed doing. Growing up watching his dad work the ranch, the toolbox was always at hand, but Preszler had no idea what to do with the tools. Why did his dad leave them to him?

Back from the funeral, grieving at his Peconic Bay beach bungalow, Preszler decided to honor his father by using the tools to build a wooden canoe and launch it on the anniversary of his father's death. The big obstacle: He had never built anything and he knew nothing about canoes.

Increasingly obsessed, he turned his house into a workshop, studied canoe building, bought power tools and ordered a truckload of lumber. He slept in a sleeping bag on the floor with wood shavings and his dog. He’d leave his vineyard day job each evening to work late into the night on the canoe, often remembering his father’s advice – “You gotta learn to leave well enough alone” – from the time he cut his sister Lucy’s hair too short. As he brushed another coat of varnish, he recalled “Plenty ought to be enough” from the steakhouse all-you-can-eat salad bar.

Through a steep-learning-curve year, Preszler meticulously created a 20-foot wooden canoe as remarkable as his book in which the narrative weaves his life’s story with poetic scenes like his drive home through the heartlands and the intense details of carving canoe slats.

In the end, "Little and Often" proves to be a rich tale of self-discovery and reconciliation. Resonating with Robert Pirsig’s classic "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," it is a profound father-and-son odyssey that discovers the importance of the beauty of imperfection and small triumphs that make extraordinary happen.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trent Preszler’s 'Little and Often' a profound father-son memoir