In this soul-piercing memoir, David McKain penetrates the secret world of a poor boy coming of age on his own in "God's Country," a small oil-drilling town in the Allegheny Mountains during the 1940s and 1950s. His devoutly religious parents, overwhelmed by their own struggles, relinquished their son's upbringing to the town and the wooded slopes that encircled it. Cutting school, straying from Boy Scouts, dropping out of church choir, McKain maneuvered away from control and into the joys and trials of adolescent discovery. Spellbound is an unforgettable story of a family enmeshed in tenderness and poverty, faith, and affliction.

Selected by: Diane Ackerman