About this item
In this exquisitely rendered memoir set on the high plains of Texas Pulitzer Prize winner Gail Caldwell transforms into art what it is like to come of age in a particular time and place A Strong West Wind begins in the s in the wilds of the Texas Panhandlea place of both boredom and beauty its flat horizons broken only by oil derricks grain elevators and church steeples Its story belongs to a girl who grew up surrounded by dust storms and cattle ranches and summer lightning who took refuge from the vastness of the land and the ever-present wind by retreating into books What she found there from renegade women to men who lit out for the territory turned out to offer a blueprint for her own future Caldwell would grow up to become a writer but first she would have to fall in love with a man who was every mothers nightmare live through the anguish and fire of the Vietnam years and defy the father she adored who had served as a master sergeant in the Second World War A Strong West Wind is a memoir of culture and historyof fathers and daughters of two world wars and the passionate rebellions of the sixties But it is also about the mythology of place and the evolution of a sensibility about how literature can shape and even anticipate a lifeCaldwell possesses the extraordinary ability to illuminate the desires stories and lives of ordinary people Written with humanity urgency and beautiful restraint A Strong West Wind is a magical and unforgettable book destined to become an American classic.
About the Author
Gail Caldwell is the former chief book critic for The Boston Globe, where she was a staff writer and critic for more than twenty years. In 2001, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. She is also the author of A Strong West Wind, a memoir of her native Texas. Caldwell lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
