A Personal Country

Coming up on the thirtieth anniversary of its first publication, this book brings alive what one man feels about his childhood home. The place is West Texas, seen across a long vista in which today's events and people merge with the author's boyhood and young manhood. It is a harsh, remote country, where the weather is always close and the horizon far away. The Brazos country of long-ago Fourth of July fishing expeditions; the remains of a way station of the Butterfield Stage Line; the streets of Abilene; the sparse grazing lands under infinite skies - all are made resonant by a native son's affection and understanding. It is a way of life - resilient and persnickety - that is almost gone. Above all, it is people: the author's grandmother, who had a mortal fear of bridges and whose premonitions of unnamed calamities (that as often as not happened), both alarmed and pleased the young boy; the blacksmith they awakened in the dead of night to repair the family Maxwell; the familiar neighbors; the rare and deliciously mysterious strangers.