Book excerpt: This true story of literary stardom and sudden tragedy is “a riveting book, shattering and shot through with the powerful poignancy of a life undone” (Detroit News). Raintree County, the first novel by Ross Lockridge, Jr., was the publishing event of 1948. Excerpted in Life magazine, it was a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection, won MGM’s Novel Award and a movie deal, and stood at the top of the nation’s bestseller lists. Unfortunately, Lockridge’s first novel was also his last. Two months after its publication the thirty-three-year-old author from Bloomington, Indiana, took his own life. His son Larry was five years old at the time. Shade of the Raintree is Larry’s search for an understanding of his father’s baffling act. In this powerfully narrated biography, Larry Lockridge uncovers a man of great vitality, humor, love, and visionary ambition, but also of deep vulnerability. The author manages to combine a son’s emotional investments with a sleuth’s dispassionate inquiry. The result is “a book that is, in its own way, as remarkable and compelling as Raintree County” (Milwaukee Journal). “Larry Lockridge here faces the double tasking 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 This edition includes a new preface by the author.