Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son - Softcover

Elizabeth Hardwick A heartbreaking, eloquent memoir by the son of the heartbreaking, eloquent poet, James Dickey.

David Kirby The New York Times Book Review Angry, affectionate...both gut-wrenching and hypnotic. A father-son conflict worthy of the pen of Sophocles.

Joseph P. Kahn The Boston Globe As unsentimental a father-son memoir as one can imagine. James Dickey may have died a broken man, but he was given a tremendous opportunity to get at least one thing right. By the evidence of this book, he succeeded, too.

David Bottoms The Atlanta Journal-Constitution An exquisite balance of blistering candor and healing grace....Writing so wonderful that it simply transcends the limits of the genre.

Summer of Deliverance is a powerful and moving memoir of anger, love, and reconciliation between a son and his father. Hailed as a literary genius of his generation, James Dickey created his art and lived his life with a ferocious passion. He was a heavy drinker, a destructive husband and father, a poet of grace and sensitivity, and, after the publication and subsequent film of his novel, Deliverance, a wildly popular literary star. Drawing on letters, notebooks, diaries, and his explicit conversations with his father, Christopher Dickey has crafted a superb memoir of the corrosive effects of fame, a moving remembrance of a crisis that united a family, and an inspiring celebration of love between father and son.