New York: Norton, (1991) dj. Hardcover first edition - "A Southern Boyhood." Southern author's first memoir (preceded by two novels) written when a diagnosis of cancer sent him in two directions - into the world of hospitals and medicine and a transplant in Seattle - and backward into his childhood years in rural hardscrabble North Carolina, where the gift of a telescope made him "the keeper of the moon." Dustjacket praise by Harry Crews, Lee Smith, Larry Brown and more. 316 pp. ISBN: 0-393-02715.