William Humphrey's acclaimed memoir is a richly detailed portrait of small-town Texas and a poignant account of the tragedy that shaped the author's life.At three o'clock in the morning on July 5, 1937, William Humphrey awoke to his mother's urgent cry: "Get dressed as quick as you can! Your daddy has been hurt." Rushing to the doctor's office, mother and son arrived to find Clarence Humphrey battered beyond recognition: his chest crushed, his face bruised black and caked with blood, his teeth shattered. He soon drew his final breath.
In that terrible moment, 13-year-old William knew that nothing would ever be the same again: "I felt slip from me in that moment not only the certainty of my future but the fixity of my past. It was as if I had been wakened out of my childhood." He moved with his mother to Dallas soon after, and although he set his classic novels, Home from the Hill and The Ordways, in his hometown of Clarksville, he would not return for 32 years.
A masterpiece of autobiography, Farther Off from Heaven is the fiercely honest, exquisitely crafted story of William Humphrey's childhood and the sudden end of his innocence.
