Tales My Father Never Told - (New York State) by Walter D Edmonds (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

These are the memoirs, told in a series of vignettes, of the well-known author's childhood, spent between a big house on West 11th Street, New York and a thousand-acre summer place in the foothills of the Adirondacks. What emerges is a portrait of an overbearing father and a dutiful son.

From the Back Cover

This new book by Walter Edmonds is a cause for celebration. For decades Edmonds has been one of America's most popular writers. A National Book Award and Newbery Medal winner, his Drums Along the Mohawk is one of the all-time best sellers. His many historical novels about America and his extremely popular children's books have earned for him a loyal and substantial group of fans. Edmonds' latest book, his first in decades, will be welcomed by readers all over. Tales My Father Never Told is a nostalgic look back at another time and place. This is the autobiography Edmonds never wrote. It lovingly recreates his childhood and pre-adolescent days growing up at the foot of the great Adirondacks, in the rural beauty of the Northlands. He writes about his first drunk, his special love for fly-fishing, certain Irish "ghosts" known to inhabit the land along their stream... and his father: "We did not often understand each other then; in the end I was able to see that love had existed, existed on both sides, and perhaps that disclosure is justification for this small book". Tales thus has a thoughtful and sometimes painful edge to it, but there is much humor too, as when the young "Watty" learns to forge his father's signature, or where he hints that the dagger father has mounted over his bed might be tipped with curare. And so, Tales is about youth and rural life, about the early years of one of this country's finest writers and, as Edmonds tells us, it is the story of a father and a son, of the love he felt for the son, deep and real, and of a love that "worked both ways".

Review Quotes

[Edmonds] looks back on his conflicts with his father in the first two decades of the century with a combination of humor and horror. His anecdotes are fun and suspenseful, and he displays a remarkable eye for detail in conveying life at the family's Manhattan apartment and its upstate New York farm. And Mr. Edmonds determines that despite it all, he and his father had actually loved each other--a disclosure that he says might be justification enough for this small book.-- "The New York Times Book Review"

Edmonds movingly evokes his boyhood in New York City and on a beloved family farm upstate. . . . Simple and simply told stories, capturing the constantly shifting sands of the father-son relationship and the appeal of life before the Depression.-- "Kirkus Reviews"

Edmonds' poignant memoir reflects back to the early years of the century and the tangle of emotions associated with his father. . . . As the writer sorts through old memories, he achieves timeless descriptions of the family's life in New York City and their country place, Northlands.-- "Booklist"

About the Author

Walter D. Edmonds is the author of more than thirty books, including Drums Along the Mohawk, Chad Hanna, In the Hands of the Senecas, Rome Haul, and The Boyds of Black River, all available from Syracuse University Press. A recipient of the Newbery Medal, he also won the National Book Award for Bert Breen's Barn.