Research Catalog

Haley, Texas 1959 : two novellas

Title
Haley, Texas 1959 : two novellas / Donley Watt.
Author
Watt, Donley.
Publication
El Paso, Tex. : Cinco Puntos Press, [1999], ©1999.

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Details

Description
180 pages; 24 cm
Summary
  • "In the novella Seven Days Working, an older man recalls his own childhood and an impossible task he was given by his father when he was 14 - to clear out 70 acres of mesquite, using an axe. The way the boy sees it, he'll never finish.
  • He has only seven days and during that time - camping out alone in the pasture with a dozen brindle cows, some lizards, frogs, rabbits and a lot of flies for company - he strikes at the trunks of those thorny, unyielding trees even as he hacks through the rough places in his own understanding. The boy has the task of clearing mesquite, while the man, recalling, uses the memory to get at the root of who he is."--BOOK JACKET.
  • "In the title novella - Haley, Texas 1959 - Watt uses the intense racial prejudices of a small town in East Texas to paint the backdrop for the murder of a black man. A young teenage boy - the "preacher's boy" as he is referred to - is an unwitting accomplice. He's bored. His older cousin lets him tag along as he and two rowdy friends cruise the back roads in a '55 Chevy. What starts out as a joy ride - a chance to have a little fun and teach a black man a "much-deserved" lesson - quickly turns deadly.
  • The boy's father, Reverend Wallace Wilson, is called in after the murder to help bring about a softening of hearts between the white and black community, little suspecting that his own son is involved. When the boy finally confesses to the truth, his father looks desperately for a solution that will fall outside the bounds of punishment and ruined lives - yet finds himself estranged from everything he believes in."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects
Contents
Seven Days Working -- Haley, Texas 1959.
ISBN
0938317482 (alk. paper)
LCCN
99037015
OCLC
ocm41662557
Owning Institutions
Columbia University Libraries