Larry Lockridge - Shade of the Raintree, Centennial Edition: The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr., author of Raintree County

Commentary on Larry Lockridges Shade of the
Raintree: The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr.
Viking Penguin, 1994; Penguin Books, 1995.

One senses that the novelist would be proud of his son: he has created a full portrait of life in the Midwest between the wars and of the collision of depression and the creative mind.

Publishers Weekly

No disappeared father has been more honored by a sons inquiry than is Ross Lockridge, Jr. by his son Larrys utterly engaging biography. The sons gaze is forthright, sparing nothing, accepting and reconciling all, and bringing to this absorbing history the same ancestral powers of narration which distinguished his dazzling, lost father.

Thomas Keneally, author of Schindlers List

It is clear that Shade of the Raintree is [like Raintree County] destined to become an American classic.

Richard Dyer, The Boston Globe

Larry Lockridge has written a moving account of his fathers life... I, like many Americans, was stunned by the news of his death in 1948. I am hopeful that the biography will generate renewed interest in Raintree County. The biography is wonderfully evocative of Bloomington [Indiana] in the years before World War II.

Lee Hamilton, U.S. Congressman and former member of the United States House of Representatives from Indianas 9th district A book whose stirring power and complexity would daunt any reviewer.... If it were up to me, Id give this book all the awards and literary rosettes that Raintree County should have received.

Donald Newlove, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Larry Lockridge has written what in my faith we call a Kaddish, for his father and for his mother too, beautiful and memorable.

Herman Wouk

The son of Ross Lockridge, Jr. cuts his father a new suit and redresses an injured great American writer. Larry Lockridge here faces the double task of writing a biography of his father and of finding out what drove him to a ruthless act of self-destruction. An immensely moving book, deserving of the Pulitzer Prize.

Kirkus Reviews

Shade of the Raintree is a riveting book, shattering and shot through with the powerful poignancy of a life undone.... Larry Lockridge is no apologist for his father, nor for his fathers final act. Rather, Shade of the Raintree tenderly explores the complicated psyche of the gifted young author of an epic novel.

Robin Mather, Detroit News

Out of this tragedy, Larry Lockridge has fashioned a touching, insightful, and affectionate biography. It reveals much about his gifted father, his fathers extraordinary family, and a vanished, almost idyllic worldthat of the Indiana heartland in the years between World War I and World War II.... Larry Lockridge contributes a detailed and dazzling analysis of his fathers complex, erudite novel.... He also analyzes, with equal brilliance, the mental illness that led to his fathers death.... This finely wrought, finely researched, moving and loving biography succeeds on all counts.

Pauline Mayer, Cleveland Plain Dealer

Meticulously, unflinchingly, the younger Lockridge has created a biography (it can hardly be called a memoir) that is also a searching clinical study of depression; a remarkably objective essay in literary criticism; an important contribution to rural American history, and, finally, a magnificent and compassionate act of forgiveness.

Tim Page, Newsday

Its an interesting, readable quest by a boynow a manwho, in his words, grew up with a novel instead of a father.

Jean Graham, New York Daily News

It might be expected that such a biography, dealing as it does with depression and death, would be depressing to read. But Lockridges book has many uplifting moments and many flashes of wit and humor.

William Lutholtz, Indianapolis News

Shade of the Raintree fits comfortably in the venerable canon of biographies that illuminate the tumultuous progress of American literary history even as they trace its cost in an individual life, but it is something more: a sons moving attempt to come to grips with his fathers legacy as a man and an artist.

Wendy Smith, Chicago Sun-Times

Larry Lockridge has written a wonderful biography.... [He has] an unsparing yet loving hand, a steady grace and humor that are nothing less than remarkable.... Shade of the Raintree is an act of love and of forgiveness.... In telling the difficult story of Ross Lockridges death, he provides a deeply moving portrayal of a good and gifted young man in the grip of something terrible.

Richard Bausch, LA Times

In the annals of twentieth-century American literature, there may be no act more puzzling than [the suicide of Ross Lockridge, Jr.] Shade of the Raintree is a book that is, in its own way, as remarkable and compelling as Raintree County. The answer Larry Lockridge comes up with is long and complex as American literature itself.... A review cannot do justice to the richness and detail of Lockridges analysis of his fathers despair.... He has produced a wonderful hybrid: a solid, dispassionate biography that is at the same time a tender and understanding homage.

Roger Miller, Milwaukee Journal

Shade of the Raintree

The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr.

Author of Raintree County

Larry Lockridge

Centennial Edition

Frontispiece: Ross Lockridge, Jr. with son Larry, on the boys third birthday, summer of 1945, South Byfield, Massachusetts

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

Telephone 800-842-6796
Fax 812-855-7931

First published in 1994 by Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.
2014 by Larry Lockridge

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following material: Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence, by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company; James Micheners letter to John Leggett, by permission of the estate of James Michener; Christopher Morleys correspondence, by permission of the estate of Christopher Morley. Photographs are from the authors collection, unless otherwise noted. constitutes an extension of the copyright page.

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No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

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