From Publishers Weekly
Hoard, a Methodist minister and radio sportscaster, was 14 when his father, a prosecutor in rural Georgia, was killed by a car bomb. A local bootlegger whose activities had been disrupted by the father was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment; his four accomplices were all given long prison terms. But this memoir is less about the crime than about the author's adolescence, playing football, dating problems, drinking and, finally, finding God. Hoard's athletic exploits are boringly repeated, as are his seemingly endless crushes on girls. Also flat is his meeting with his father's killer after many years.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The true story of the author's murdered father and the aftermath of trying to live when one whom you love is gone. Hoard's father, the district attorney in a small Georgia community, is killed by a local bootlegger named Cliff Park, a person who uses the legal system to his advantage in the subsequent trial. Young Hoard is in high school at the time, and the book is in part a reminiscence of 1960s small-town life, but only in part. At its core, it is a chronicle of grief and anger and confusion as Hoard tries to come of age without his father's help. He wants to make his dead father proud of him but can't understand the senselessness of what has happened. A compelling story of loss, acceptance, and forgiveness.
Brian McCombie
