Synopsis
Strong-willed and charismatic, Lester Rozelle was school superintendent in the small East Texas town of Oakwood from the 1930s to the 1960s. But several years ago Lester began to show signs of Alzheimer's disease, and his son had to watch the painful transformation of his proud father into a dependent and ultimately foreign person. Seemingly powerless to do anything but witness the slow loss of his father's past, Ron Rozelle re-creates and reclaims his own in this poignant and heartbreakingly lyrical gift for his father.
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About the Author
RON ROZELLE is the author of Into That Good Night (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), which was a finalist for the PEN American West Creative Nonfiction Prize and the Texas Institute of Letters Carr P. Collins Award. His first novel, Windows of Heaven, set in Galveston during the hurricane of 1900, was released by Texas Review Press in July of 2000. Chosen as Barnes and Nobles' Houston-area Featured Author for November, he lives in Lake Jackson, TX, with his wife Karen and their daughters and teaches creative writing and English.
From Kirkus Reviews
In Rozelle's loving memoir of his late father, a longtime Texas school superintendent, we glimpse a dimly lit picture of an aging man whose character never quite emerges. The author, himself a high-school English teacher in the Houston area, alternates reminiscences of his youth with entries from 199192, when his father, Lester, began at age 85 ``to slip a bit,'' experiencing ``short moments of confusion, the hesitation before taking a step.'' Poignant scenes show Lester getting lost in the house; forgetting that his wife was not at the store, but instead out of town; and even failing to recognize his son: ``I have a son who teaches school,'' Lester informs Ron. Now, tell me again . . . Who are you?'' Sad but, in an 85-year- old, not tragic . And the author goes on to draw a shaky portrait of his fathers life in happier years. Flashing back to the1960s, when Lester faced the challenge posed by integration to his school system, Rozelle says little about his father's actual stance. Ditto Rozelle-the-elders stint as a political appointee under President Johnson and even when teaching at a prison. We do learn that the purchase of a fishing cottage (although he did not fish) and a car trip to Florida ``were exceptions to an otherwise predictable life.'' More vivid is the evocation of Rozelle's chain-smoking, ailing mother who, stoked with too many medicines, would ultimately shoot herself to death. And a powerful scene of youthful racism has the young Rozelle denying his black playmates to a group of taunting boys: ``They ain't my friends,'' he insists. Even a slight memoir has its moments. But the real story seems to lie buried somewhere below the surface of the authors recollections of good times with his mother and under Rozelles reflections on his changing East Texas neighborhood. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Into That Good Night
Published by
G K Hall & Co, Thorndike, Maine, 2000
ISBN 10: 0783889631
ISBN 13: 9780783889634
Used
Hardcover
Seller: Orielis' Books, CHAPEL HILL, NC, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket. Illustrated by Buckley, Lynn [cover] (illustrator). Large Print Edition. Glossy pictorial cover. No jacket, apparently as issued. "This Large Print Book carries the Seal of Approval of NAVH." "Strong willed and charismatic, Lester Rozelle was school superintendent in the small East Texas town of Oakwood from the 1930s to the 1960s. With a firm hand, he guided his schools through disastrous fires and the strained process of integration in President Lyndon B. Johnson's home state. But several years ago Lester began to show signs of Alzheimer's disease, and his son had to watch the painful transformation of his proud father into a dependent and ultimately foreign person. Seemingly powerless to do anything but witness the slow loss of his father's past, Ron Rozelle re-creates and reclaims his own. Shuttling between the increasingly difficult present and his recollections of a time and a way of life now gone, Rozelle has written a poignant and heartbreaking lyrical gift for his father."; 7¾" - 9¾" Tall. Seller Inventory # 006185