" ... one of the most perfect books I have ever read. In an American Eden, a boy grows up, experiencing glory and horror and sin, with the suffering and sorrow it entails ..." Anne Fremantle " ... poignantly renders the 'confusion called childhood' -- its fears and terrors, its half-innocent delights, its intimations realized beyond words -- and renders all this with a lyric passion ..." Winfield Townley Scott.