{"product_id":"a-childhood-the-biography-of-a-place-9780820317595","title":"A Childhood: The Biography of a Place","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA Childhood: The Biography of a Place\u003c\/strong\u003e by Crews, Harry. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780820317595.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026lt;p\u0026gt;\u0026lt;i\u0026gt;A Childhood\u0026lt;\/i\u0026gt; is the unforgettable memoir of Harry Crews earliest years, a sharply remembered portrait of the people, locales, and circumstances that shaped him\u0026amp;mdash;and destined him to be a storyteller. Crews was born in the middle of the Great Depression, in a one-room sharecroppers cabin at the end of a dirt road in rural South Georgia. If Bacon County was a place of grinding poverty, poor soil, and blood feuds, it was also a deeply mystical place, where snakes talked, birds could possess a small boy by spitting in his mouth, and faith healers and conjure women kept ghosts and devils at bay.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;At once shocking and elegiac, heartrending and comical, \u0026lt;i\u0026gt;A Childhood\u0026lt;\/i\u0026gt; not only recalls the transforming events of Crewss youth but conveys his growing sense of self in a world \u0026amp;quot;in which survival depended on raw courage, a courage born out of desperation and sustained by a lack of alternatives.\u0026amp;quot;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Amid portraits of relatives and neighbors, Bacon County lore, and details of farm life, Crews tells of his fathers death; his friendship with Willalee Bookatee, the son of a black hired hand; his bout with polio; his mother and stepfathers failing marriage; his near-fatal scalding at a hog-killing; and a five-month sojourn in Jacksonville, Florida. These and other memories define, with reverence and affection, Harry Crewss childhood world: \u0026amp;quot;its people and its customs and all its loveliness and all its ugliness.\u0026amp;quot; Imaginative and gripping, \u0026lt;i\u0026gt;A Childhood\u0026lt;\/i\u0026gt; re-creates in detail one writers search for past and self, a search for a time and place lost forever except in memory.\u0026lt;\/p\u0026gt;\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"University of Georgia Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44946819612725,"sku":"ByrdShop_0820317594","price":48.78,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780820317595_9ff01189-cfe5-48b1-9cdf-b736c0ab0be5.jpg?v=1778629214","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/a-childhood-the-biography-of-a-place-9780820317595","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}