An Hour Before Daylight: Memoirs of a Rural Boyhood

(Paperback)

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Description

In an American story of enduring importance, Jimmy Carter recreates his Depression-era boyhood on a Georgia farm, before the civil rights movement that changed it and the country. In what is sure to become a classic, the bestselling author of LIVING FAITH and SOURCES OF STRENGTH writes about the powerful rhythms of countryside and community in a sharecropping economy. He offers an unforgettable portrait of his father, a brilliant farmer and strict segregationist who treated black workers with his own brand of 'separate' respect and fairness; and his strong-willed and well-read mother, a nurse who cared for all in need. He describes the five other people who shaped his early life, only two of them white; his eccentric relatives; and the boyhood friends with whom he worked the farm and hunted with slingshots and boomerangs, but who could not attend the same school. Carter's clean and eloquent prose evokes a time when the cycles of life were predictable and simple and the rules were heart-breaking and complex. AN HOUR BEFORE DAYLIGHT is destined to stand with other timeless works of American literature.

Reviews

"An American classic." * The New Yorker *
"A love story of a man's passion for his home, his family, and...for his fellow man...Will stay in the mind long after the last page is read." * United Press International *
"More than just an engaging memoir, this book is first-rate social history, a portrait of a subculture of America...a genetic road map of the making of a president." * Ray Jenkins, Baltimore Sun *
"Captivating." * Jesse Birnbaum, Time *
"A lovely and haunting piece of work...conveys with quiet passion...its author's love for the place in which he grew up and where, he says, he expects to rest for eternity." * Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World *

Author Bio

Jimmy Carter who served as thirty-ninth president of the United States, was born in Plains, Georgia, in 1924. After leaving the White House, he and his wife, Rosalynn, founded the Atlanta-based Carter Center, a nonprofit organisation that works to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health around the world.