Shade of the Raintree

Shade of the Raintree
Author: Laurence S. Lockridge
Publisher: Penguin Mass Market
Total Pages: 532
Release: 1995
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

In 1948, Ross Lockridge's novel Raintree County was a number one bestseller and acclaimed literary work. Yet, at the height of his fame at age 33, Lockridge killed himself. In a brilliant biography, his son Larry seeks understanding. Simultaneous release with the re-publication by Penguin of the long unavailable Raintree County. Photos.

Shade of the Raintree, Centennial Edition

Shade of the Raintree, Centennial Edition
Author: Larry Lockridge
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 542
Release: 2014-04-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0253012988

This true story of literary stardom and sudden tragedy is “a riveting book, shattering and shot through with the powerful poignancy of a life undone” (Detroit News). Raintree County, the first novel by Ross Lockridge, Jr., was the publishing event of 1948. Excerpted in Life magazine, it was a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection, won MGM’s Novel Award and a movie deal, and stood at the top of the nation’s bestseller lists. Unfortunately, Lockridge’s first novel was also his last. Two months after its publication the thirty-three-year-old author from Bloomington, Indiana, took his own life. His son Larry was five years old at the time. Shade of the Raintree is Larry’s search for an understanding of his father’s baffling act. In this powerfully narrated biography, Larry Lockridge uncovers a man of great vitality, humor, love, and visionary ambition, but also of deep vulnerability. The author manages to combine a son’s emotional investments with a sleuth’s dispassionate inquiry. The result is “a book that is, in its own way, as remarkable and compelling as Raintree County” (Milwaukee Journal). “Larry Lockridge here faces the double tasking of writing a biography of his father and of finding out what drove him to a ruthless act of self-destruction. An immensely moving book, deserving of the Pulitzer Prize.” —Kirkus Reviews This edition includes a new preface by the author.

Perfectly Undone

Perfectly Undone
Author: Jamie Raintree
Publisher: Harlequin
Total Pages:
Release: 2017-10-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1488027897

“The most sensational, emotionally raw, and satisfying debut of the fall.” –Redbook Magazine “From family secrets to heartbreaking lost love, the characters felt like old friends by the end. Highly recommended.”—New York Times bestselling author Kate Moretti Sometimes you have to lose your way to find yourself… Dr. Dylan Michels has worked hard for a perfect life. When her longtime boyfriend gets down on one knee, it’s the most perfect moment of all…but Dylan says no. For too many years, Dylan’s been living for her late older sister, who never got the chance to grow up. Dylan thought being the perfect daughter, perfect partner and perfect doctor would eventually ease the haunting guilt she feels over her sister’s death—and the role no one knows she played in it. But still, years later, the grief is too much to bear. Now, Dylan must find the courage to face her past and define her own happiness if she truly wants to live the life her sister never could.

The Cardiff Giant

The Cardiff Giant
Author: Larry Lockridge
Publisher:
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2021-01-11
Genre:
ISBN: 9781771804233

The Cardiff Giant, set in Cooperstown, New York, has up its novelistic sleeve Puck's profound declaration, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" Jess Freeman, investigative reporter, arrives on the scene to look into the weird disappearance from the Farmers' Museum of a huge human figure. He had been unearthed in the late nineteenth century near Cardiff, New York. Jess confronts locals and outsiders who all have a theory, including that the giant has been reanimated and is lurching throughout the community. They are enmeshed in self-punishing belief systems such as alien abduction, astrology, kabbalistic numerology, New Age rebirthing, and religious dogmas reduced to literal absurdities. The fast-paced action centers around episodes where they pay a sorry price for their beliefs. But skeptics don't fare much better, susceptible as they are to mental disorders that show the faculty of reason is fragile indeed. These characters group and regroup, with romance always on their minds, and finally come to recognitions at once surprising and moving.

Middling Folk

Middling Folk
Author: Linda H. Matthews
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2010
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1556529694

The author traces the history of her quite ordinary family, the Hammills, as they made their way from southwest Scotland to Northern Ireland, then to North America's Chesapeake Bay region, and finally on to the Pacific Northwest.

Raintree County Memories

Raintree County Memories
Author: Mark Sean Orr
Publisher:
Total Pages: 119
Release: 2012
Genre: Henry County (Ind.)
ISBN:

Ross Lockridge Jr. wrote the novel Raintree County (which corresponds to the real Henry County, Indiana), which inspired a film of the same name. This book contains a collection of stories, remembrances, and photos connected with the book, film, and county.

The Great Cyprus Think Tank

The Great Cyprus Think Tank
Author: Larry Lockridge
Publisher: Iguana Books
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2021-10-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781771804967

The Great Cyprus Think Tank is narrated by Bart Beasley, a dejected Canadian author of cultural memoirs who yearns to return to Cyprus, where he spent his youth and where he might shake off his ennui. He forms a think tank of renowned but flawed experts to tackle crises still besetting the fabled island in 2024. The birthplace of Aphrodite is parched, its famed sea turtles face extinction, its songbirds are swallowed whole by native epicures, and Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, if no longer dispatching one another, rarely send over a bottle of wine. A string of felicitous adventures and seeming successes follows, while romantic liaisons spring up within the think tank's ranks. Where else but in Cyprus could the Fellows hope to unearth Pygmalion's ancient showgirl sculpture of Aphrodite in time for Kataklysmós, an annual celebration of Noah's flood when Cypriots take to the sea and flirtatiously splash one another? Unknown to all but alert readers is a counterplot to waylay the think tank's best designs.

Skeleton Key to the Suicide of My Father, Ross Lockridge, Jr., Author of Raintree County

Skeleton Key to the Suicide of My Father, Ross Lockridge, Jr., Author of Raintree County
Author: Ernest Lockridge
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2014-03-29
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9781497462090

WHY did my brilliant father, Ross Lockridge, Jr., execute himself at 33, March 6, 1948, while his first novel, RAINTREE COUNTY, was the Number-One Bestseller in America? Critics were hailing it as the sole recent contender for the ultimate American title, "The Great American Novel." Even as my father was murdering himself, he was experiencing critical and financial success beyond the greatest of great expectations. He died with full knowledge that his life, viewed from the street, had exceeded all but the most extravagant of human dreams. My book holds the SKELETON KEY that unlocks the Riddle of Raintree County. I offer this painful story less from choice than from an obligation to history and to truth, in order that the truth will not die with me. Squeamishness and mendacity, blood brothers, go hand in hand. Miss Manners plays no part this tragedy. Truth is not subject to etiquette or taste, and it is precisely because the truth about my father's brief, terrible life and his forlorn death is unspeakable that the truth demands to be told.

The Rain Tree

The Rain Tree
Author: Mirabel Osler
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2012-05-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1408822210

A beautifully written memoir from the bestselling author of A Gentle Plea for Chaos.