The new column collection, featuring selections from 1989-1996, is available in local bookstores now. |
|
Praise for
"A fetching, down-home sampler of newspaper pieces that's by turns tart and sweet....Reading these short meditations is like settling in with a box of bourbon candy: It's hard to stop with just a few, and if the booze doesn't buzz you, the sugar will....His enthusiasm for life...is undeniably infectious."
|
Home Spun presents narratives of ordinary experience filtered through an extraordinary sensibility – kind, tolerant, funny, always delightful. And told in the graceful conversational prose that has long been Leon Hale's hallmark.
Among the seventy-six pieces gathered here are observations about what can happen when you turn off the t.v.; his continuing quest for a hobby; what stopped a friend from suicide; the subtle changes that forecast autumn; his reaction to a violent movie; the thief who stole a suitcase of books; what it's like to grow older; a dog who eats sticks; and what his mother saved instead of money. Here also – for the first time in a collection – we find stories of Madame Z, the Brazos Bottom fortune-teller, and My Friend Mel, together with an extended reflection on Primavera, his annual trip with O.F. Morgan in search of spring. A second longer piece ponders the author's visit to Normandy on the occasion of the Invasion's Fiftieth Anniversary. Hale's view of this heavily reported event is typically fresh and moving. Read Home Spun and relish the unique perspective of an American original as he observes the land and people of our time.
Home Spun; ISBN 0-9657468-2-8; Hardcover; 256 pages with index; $21.95.
|
|
To order
Available in area bookstores, over the Internet, or directly from Texas A&M University Press Consortium |
|