A farmhouse matches a writer's life

The same impulse to improve his old farmhouse has served him well in his 40-year tenure at The Atlantic in downtown Boston and as editor of six short-story anthologies. His most recent collection, "Faith: Stories, Short Fiction on the Varieties and Vagaries of Faith," published last month by Houghton Mifflin, is a companion to an earlier collection, "God: Stories."

Curtis's dedication to antique abodes began four decades ago with the purchase of a Victorian in Watertown. The house was large enough to accommodate his growing family of two sons and a daughter. Several years later, he bought a 19th-century Tudor in Brookline.

"The house didn't have a driveway -- I had to rent a parking space nearby -- but it was a spectacular home, 16 rooms," says Curtis. "Each of my children had a bedroom and bath suite."

Ten years later, he moved to a Victorian in West Concord. Then in 1994, he and his second wife, novelist Elizabeth (Betsy) Cox, bought this place a mile from Interstate 495.

"Betsy wanted something that was in move-in condition and I wanted something old," says Curtis. "So when she saw this farmhouse in Littleton that didn't require a lot of work, she said I better come look. As soon as I saw it, I knew instantly it was right."

The white clapboard with three bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths sits on 3 acres of pasture. It needed only a few changes: a new roof and kitchen floor. As a bonus, Curtis and Cox finished off two attic bedrooms for visiting children and grandchildren. (Curtis's daughter, Hillary, gave birth to the family's first grandchild last fall. Cox, a native of Tennessee, is expecting her first grandchild in January.)

Most important, the couple turned the barn, formerly an artist's studio, into a fiction-lover's playhouse. "It's our favorite room of the house," says Curtis.

The barn, linked to the house by the breezeway, is a perfumery of unpainted pine walls, steeped this particular day in a cool, morning light. Its cathedral ceilings contrast with the lower ceilings in the rest of the house. A couch and upholstered chairs form the classroom for the dozen or so writers who attend Curtis's fiction workshops Tuesday nights. He has held classes in his home for 30 years.

The barn windows allow peeks of the pasture, where a half dozen sheep make their home in warmer months. At the far corner, Cox works at a built-in computer desk. She taught writing at Duke University for 17 years and is finishing her fourth novel, due next spring. The quiet is palpable: A church bell on a hill behind the house chimes at the top of the hour. Curtis's office is an enclosed stall with a door, layered with bookshelves holding dozens of short-story anthologies. He points to a leather chair by a window, where he reads and edits manuscripts, often at night. Samples of paintings by his youngest son, Hans, animate the rough pine walls. His son Christopher manages a neighboring landmark, the West Concord Five and Dime.

Perhaps it was really the basketball court across the street that sealed the house deal for Curtis, a longtime disciple of the game. He plays with a neighborhood group on Saturdays, sometimes Sundays. During the week, he shoots hoops at the Cambridge YMCA.

One of his favorite chores is stacking -- and restacking -- firewood for the two fireplaces. Another is weeding the garden. "I'm a neat freak," he confesses. "I crave order."

In "Faith: Stories," the 24 fictions, set in a range of cultures and time periods, have as much to do with striving for order as they do with depicting a disorderly world. Ultimately, the stories reveal the nooks and crannies of faith, or lack thereof, in the characters' lives. Like his antique farmhouse, these explorations of faith -- whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist -- are meant to endure.