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About Farther Off from Heaven: A Memoir (Unabridged)

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.