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A Writer's Journey Home
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
February 2011
On Sale: February 15, 2011
224 pages
ISBN: 038551302X
EAN: 9780385513029
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
In this otherworldly memoir of extraordinary power, Mark
Richard, an award-winning author, tells his story of growing
up in the American South with a heady Gothic mix of racial
tension and religious fervor.
Called a “special child,” Southern social code for
mentally—and physically—challenged children, Richard was
crippled by deformed hips and was told he would spend his
adult life in a wheelchair. During his early years in
charity hospitals, Richard observed the drama of other
broken boys’ lives, children from impoverished Appalachia,
tobacco country lowlands, and Richmond’s poorest
neighborhoods. The son of a solitary alcoholic father whose
hair-trigger temper terrorized his family, and of a mother
who sought inner peace through fasting, prayer, and
scripture, Richard spent his bedridden childhood withdrawn
into the company of books. As a young man, Richard, defying both his doctors and
parents, set out to experience as much of the world as he
could—as a disc jockey, fishing trawler deckhand, house
painter, naval correspondent, aerial photographer, private
investigator, foreign journalist, bartender and unsuccessful
seminarian—before his hips failed him. While digging
irrigation ditches in east Texas, he discovered that a
teacher had sent a story of his to the Atlantic, where it
was named a winner in the magazine’s national fiction
contest launching a career much in the mold of Jack London
and Mark Twain. A superbly written and irresistible blend of history,
travelogue, and personal reflection, House of Prayer No. 2
is a remarkable portrait of a writer’s struggle with his
faith, the evolution of his art, and of recognizing one’s
singularity in the face of painful disability. Written with
humor and a poetic force, this memoir is destined to become
a modern classic.
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