Coming up on the thirtieth anniversary of its first publication, this book brings alive what one man feels about his childhood home. The place is West Texas, seen across a long vista in which today's events and people merge with the author's boyhood and young manhood. It is a harsh, remote country, where the weather is always close and the horizon far away. The Brazos country of long-ago Fourth of July fishing expeditions; the remains of a way station of the Butterfield Stage Line; the streets of Abilene; the sparse grazing lands under infinite skies - all are made resonant by a native son's affection and understanding. It is a way of life - resilient and persnickety - that is almost gone. Above all, it is people: the author's grandmother, who had a mortal fear of bridges and whose premonitions of unnamed calamities (that as often as not happened), both alarmed and pleased the young boy; the blacksmith they awakened in the dead of night to repair the family Maxwell; the familiar neighbors; the rare and deliciously mysterious strangers.