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Overview
Dan Wakefield was a successful writer of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays when he awoke to a private life that was disintegrating in alcohol, depression, and isolation. He fled Hollywood for Boston where he reclaimed a faith he had thought he was too sophisticated to embrace. In this moving memoir, Wakefield returns to his religious roots and his early life: his Indiana boyhood, his tumultuous student days, and his growth as a writer.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Wakefield (Going All the Way et al.) sweeps us up into his life story, which begins here at a fearful moment. At age 48, he awoke screaming in panic and fled from Hollywood to Boston in search of treatment for stress and later for a deeper malady, spiritual emptiness. He recalls growing up an indulged only son in Indiana, studying at Columbia University during the 1950s, becoming a New Yorker and rejecting his Protestant faith. He writes about his professors, classmates and others met on the road to his successful career as a writer. Eloquently, he recreates his initial steps in regaining his religious faith. Wakefield expresses gratitude to those with whom he attended a course at a parish house in Boston, instruction that forms the foundation of this compelling testament. (March)Library Journal
Memories of abandoned childhood faith and the gracious aid of mentors (Mark Van Doren, Robert Coles) illumine this account of writer Wakefield's spiritual pilgrimage from his boyhood in Indiana through teen-age agonies over acne and sex, immersion in atheistic Columbia University in the early 1950s, protracted analysis, and a depressing mix of alcohol and failed relationships even as his writing career flourished. Triggered by mid-life conversion and nurturance in Boston's King's Chapel, this narrative reflects obliquely on the ways God was really there all along, despite Wakefield's frantic resistance. A moving bookhonest, evocative, and insightful. ECBook Details
Published
March 1, 1988
Publisher
New York : Doubleday, 1988.
Pages
250
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780385237222