243 pages, 8 plates, cloth dj, very good. From the dj, 'In Home Before Dark, John Cheever's daughter, Susan Cheever, has used his revealing unpublished journals, letters and her own memories of their life together in a talented and volatile family to tell the remarkable story of one of American literature's foremost writers. Home Before Dark is a moving chronicle of John Cheever's successes and failures as a son, brother, husband, and father; his childhood in a prosperous family on Boston's South Shore and his flight from the family when that prosperity came to an abrupt end; his search for salaried work in New York City in the 1930s when his writing career seemed permanently stalled; his stint in the army during World War II; his struggle to write a novel and find a publisher for it in the 1950s, a time when he was gaining a reputation as a master of the short story; his unhappy break with the New Yorker magazine; his financial success in the 1950s and the subsequent collapse that appeared to be the end of his career; his efforts to hold his marriage and family together under the strains of his own secret life; how he finally won his twenty-year battle with alcoholism and sailed into the triumphs and critical approval that came with the publication of his novel Falconer and The Collected Stories of John Cheever in the 1970s; the doubts and fears of his last years; and his final illness.'

HOME BEFORE DARK SUSAN CHEEVER JOHN CHEEVER BIOGRAPHY AMERICAN