Childhood a biography of place

In his memoir, A Childhood:The Biography of a Place(1978), American author Harry Crews chronicles the first six years of his life growing up in rural Georgia during the Great Depression.

Kirkus Reviewscalled A Childhood"a mottled, textured reminiscence of seasonal rituals, periodic tragedy, and indelible coincidence."

On June 7, 1935, Harry Crews is born in Alma, Georgia, a small rural community located in Bacon County.

His parents are desperately poor tenant farmers struggling to survive amid the Great Depression. When Harry is only two years old, his father dies of a heart attack, leaving his mother in an even more desperate condition than before.

In need of a partner, his mother marries her dead husband's brother, a man Crews says, "might have been a good father had he not been a brutal drunk." For much of his childhood, Harry has no idea this man is not his biological father.

Harry's stepfather also frequently reaches for his shotgun when drinking and in arg