Floyd Warner, eighty-two, has driven from California to his childhood home in Nebraska in his antique Maxwell coupe. There he confronts the smoldering remains of this late sister's house and the realization that he is now completely alone. As though in a trance, he sets out once again, this time to find his first adult home, a dusty sheep farm in the southwest, preparing to meet the fate that ultimately awaits him.

Of such deceptively simple ingredients is this brilliant portrait of the last hours of an old man's life composed. Floyd Warner, who first appeared in Fire Sermon, is perhaps the ultimate characterization in the career of a writer who has been called "quite simply the best novelist now writing in America" (John W. Aldridge).

About the Author
One of the most distinguished American authors, Wright Morris (1910-1998) wrote thirty-three books including The Field of Vision, which won the National Book Award.

Reviews
"More than any of Morris's seventeen previous novels, the story takes off from the workaday world in search of the ineffable. . . . The question is never deemed worth asking, whether this life was worth living. There is nothing here of the noble Willa Cather nostalgia for a Nebraska full of giants, or the facile Hemingway nostalgia for a Michigan of pliant girls and truly good trout. By the time Floyd is murdered for his watch, he has swollen into a huge and lonely figure. His death can stand for that of the white man's America, or of the whole human race."-Time



Book Information
ISBN 9780803281066
Author Wright Morris
Format Paperback
Page Count 152
Imprint University of Nebraska Press
Publisher University of Nebraska Press
Weight(grams) 193g