A Tidewater Morning: Three Tales from Youth

by William Styron

Overview

From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Sophie’s Choice: three novellas of a young writer’s journey to adulthood.

In Love Day, twenty-year-old Paul Whitehurst is a Marine lieutenant during World War II, waiting to land on Okinawa, wrestling with anxiety and memories of his boyhood in Virginia.
 
In Shadrach, ten-year-old Paul witnesses his neighbors as they welcome a guest: a ninety-nine-year-old former slave who has walked nine hundred miles from Alabama so that he may die on the land of his childhood owner.
 
And in A Tidewater Morning, Paul is thirteen and struggling to deal with his mother’s impending death from cancer.
 
Together in one volume, each of these affecting semiautobiographical novellas from the author of such literary classics as the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Confessions of Nat Turner and the memoir Darkness Visible, weaves together the transformative experiences of Whitehurst’s early life with William Styron’s signature deep historical insight, underscoring how the significance of the past informs the present. As the Los Angeles Times notes, it is “one of Styron’s finest works. . . . The beauty and humanity of the Southern tradition are evoked vividly.”
 This ebook features a new illustrated biography of William Styron, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Styron family and the Duke University Archives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936317257
Publisher:	Open Road Media
Publication date:	05/04/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

William Styron (1925–2006), born in Newport News, Virginia, was one of the greatest American writers of his generation. Styron published his first book, Lie Down in Darkness, at age twenty-six and went on to write such influential works as the controversial and Pulitzer Prize–winning The Confessions of Nat Turner and the international bestseller Sophie’s Choice.

William Styron (1925–2006), born in Newport News, Virginia, was one of the greatest American writers of his generation. Styron published his first book, Lie Down in Darkness, at age twenty-six and went on to write such influential works as the controversial and Pulitzer Prize–winning The Confessions of Nat Turner and the international bestseller Sophie’s Choice.

Hometown:

Roxbury, Connecticut, and Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

June 11, 1925

Date of Death:

November 1, 2006

Place of Birth:

Newport News, Virginia

Place of Death:

Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts

Education:

Davidson College and Duke University, both in North Carolina; courses at the New School for Social Research in New York

Table of Contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Author’s Note
• Love Day
• Shadrach
• A Tidewater Morning
• A Biography of William Styron
• Copyright Page

Editorial Reviews

The publisher bills this as Styron's first book of fiction in more than a decade. Sophie's Choice was published in 1979--but that is misleading: the most recent of these three Esquire stories collected here was published in 1987, and the other two appeared in 1978 and 1985. As one would expect, there are patches of startling writing here, particularly in the title story, in which Styron's evocation of the Virginia landscape of his youth is achingly beautiful. But on the evidence of these unremarkable pieces, Styron does not seem to be a natural short-story writer; his lush prose needs the breathing room of a long novel, space enough for his narrative to gather momentum before lifting off. The three tales are united by their single narrator, one Paul Whitehurst, and his search for ``light refracted within a flashing moment of remembered childhood.'' They take up the issues Styron has grappled with in previous fiction--the legacy of slavery and racism in the South, the constricting ties of family relationships, the tragedy of war--but with neither a refreshing new perspective nor the tremendous oratorical potency that Styron's readers expect from him. This is well-crafted magazine fiction that is satisfying only for as long as it lasts. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In each of these three stories, which orignally appeared in Esquire magazine in the Seventies and Eighties, narrator Paul Whitehurst recalls significant episodes from his childhood in Virginia during the Depression and the Second World War. In ``Love Day,'' Paul remembers his father's analysis of the economic benefits the war has brought to the South, as he himself sails to Japan with the invasion fleet. In ``Shadrach,'' a dying former slave returns to the rundown plantation where he was born. In the title story, Paul commemorates his mother's agonizing death from cancer. The narratives, as Styron says in a preface, ``reflect the experiences of the author,'' as well as recapitulate, in luminous prose, most of the major themes of his longer fiction, from Set This House on Fire (1951) to Sophie's Choice (1981). For all its brevity, this collection is arguably the best single-volume introduction to this important author. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/93.-- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles

Library Journal

From the author of, among other novels, the classic "Lie Down in Darkness" (1952), the controversial "Confessions of Nat Turner" (1968), and the monumental "Sophie's Choice" (1979), comes a book less a peak in Styron's career than perhaps a lovely, serene valley. Three long short stories (each previously published in "Esquire") form a triptych capturing as if in amber a trio of moments in Paul Whitehurst's youth and early manhood. In "Love Day," he's a Marine preparing to participate in the assault on Okinawa in the last days of World War II. "I felt as helpless and as vulnerable as I had at any time since I had gone to war," says Paul; it's a time of poignant introspection, cast here in Styron's trademark mellifluous style. "Shadrach" features a younger Paul's reactions (he's 10 that summer) to an ancient black man who returns to the local plantation where he was born in slavery, to die and be buried. The issue brings out residual racist attitudes still grounded in the soil of the Virginia Tidewater in those Depression days. The triptych's final panel, "A Tidewater Morning," is actually situated chronologically between its predecessors, and it's the most affecting of the three. With a pungency that keenly pierces the reader's heart by use of a blade devoid of sentimentality, Paul recalls his father's disgust with a God that would take in such an excruciating manner the life of his wife, Paul's mother. Back in the second story, Paul mentions that something "caused me to shiver with their splendor," and the reader will indeed have the same reactions to the words, sentences, and perceptions offered here.

Brad Hooper