Proud Flesh: A Novel

· Open Road Media
Ebook
328
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

“A big, rich, satisfying, old-fashioned hunk of a book . . . part comedy, part tragedy, and thoroughly satisfying.” —Chicago Tribune Book World

A Texas family as big and brash as their home state, the Renshaws are united by their fierce loyalty to one another and their ruthlessness in destroying anyone who threatens their interests.
 
When the Renshaw matriarch, Edwina, takes to her deathbed, her ten children are summoned home to stand vigil. Past humiliations and long-simmering resentments soon boil to the surface—a son’s forbidden love affair destroyed by his imperious mother, a daughter’s dutiful attentions greeted with nothing but disdain. But the most painful wound of all is the absence of Kyle, Edwina’s favorite son and the only member of the family to leave Texas. What drove him away, and can his siblings get him home in time to see his mother before she dies?
 
As the ties that bind the indomitable Renshaws stretch and fray, Proud Flesh builds to a stunning climax of passion and violence. It is an unforgettable story, and one of William Humphrey’s finest.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of William Humphrey including rare photos form the author’s estate.

About the author

William Humphrey (1924–1997) was born in Clarksville, Texas. Neither of his parents went to school beyond the fifth grade, and during the height of the Great Depression his father hunted in the snake-infested swamplands of the Sulphur River to help feed the family. Humphrey left Clarksville at age thirteen and did not return for thirty-two years. By then he was the internationally acclaimed author of two extraordinary novels set in his hometown: Home from the Hill, a National Book Award finalist that became an MGM film starring Robert Mitchum, and its follow-up, The Ordways, which the New York Times called “exhilaratingly successful.” Eleven highly praised works of fiction and nonfiction followed, including Farther Off from Heaven, a memoir about Humphrey’s East Texas boyhood and his father’s tragic death in an automobile accident; The Spawning Run and My Moby Dick, two delightful accounts of the joys and travails of fly fishing; and No Resting Place, a novel about the forced removal of the Cherokee nation along the Trail of Tears.

A longtime professor of English and writing at Bard College and other schools, Humphrey was the recipient of awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Texas Institute of Arts and Letters. 

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