$22.00 cloth | $14.95 paper
Restoring the Burnt Child is the second
volume in William Kloefkorn's four-part memoir which, when
completed, will cover the four elements: water, fire, earth, and
air.
Negotiating the no man’s land between ages nine
and thirteen, this memoir of a small-town boy’s life in 1940s
Kansas continues the story William Kloefkorn began in his
much-loved volume This Death by Drowning. With
characteristic humor and in prose as lyrical as his best poetry,
Kloefkorn describes the unsentimental education he received at
the hands of the denizens of Urie’s Barber Shop and the Rexall
Drugstore and at the knees of the true characters who made up
his family. From the “firefly” stunt that nearly burns down his
home to the distant firestorms of World War II, fire holds an
endless range of subtle and surprising lessons for the boy,
whose impressions Kloefkorn conveys with the immediacy, naiveté,
and poignancy of youth—and reconsiders with the wisdom and
distance of age.
By turns charming and resolute, funny and
moving, Restoring the Burnt Child powerfully brings to
life the lost, unforgettable world of a boy, and a poet, coming
of age in midcentury middle America.
Praise for Restoring the Burnt Child
“A marvelous book, full of the intensity and
grittiness of language drawn from rocky Kansas fields and from
great literature. Kloefkorn’s voice provides a perspective
unlike any other I’ve read, one that has had me reading out
loud, saying, ‘Listen to this.’”—Peggy Shumaker, author of
Underground Rivers
“A fun, interesting, and compelling read,
combining the best of fiction writing with the intimacy and
material of memoir.”—Dianne Nelson Oberhansly, author of A
Brief History of Male Nudes in America
"As history both personal and communal, and as
performance both written and oral, this book gives us
[Kloefkorn] at his best."—David Pichaske, Great Plains
Quarterly
“Imagine the renegade, 14-year old spirit of
Huck Finn in the massive body of Merlin Olsen, gentlest of the
giants who were the L.A. Rams’ legendary ‘Fearsome Foursome,’
and you’ve got Bill Kloefkorn. Or as close as you can
get.”—Harold Hill, Lincoln Journal Star
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