In <strong>Blood and Memory</strong> the story of the son annotates the story of the father.That is an old theme in the literature of the South and elsewhere. R... » 

In Blood and Memory the story of the son annotates the story of the father.That is an old theme in the literature of the South and elsewhere. RobertBenson handles it without sparing pitying or psychomythologicallyaggrandizing himself. The substance of his book is anecdotal the tone is lowkeyed and evenkeeled. His contemplation of his own life unexpectedly broughtinto my mind a writer he apparently knows well enough to have utterlymetabolized Geoffrey Chaucer. Franklin Burroughs Blood and Memory cuts along deep furrow through time and place. Robert Benson ploughs the rich blacktopsoil of family and digs into the clay beneath turning up accounts of dayssometimes hard but always welllived. Snakes wind through the margins ofBensons pages a swamp spreads like an erasure and a fishing pole danglesits hook baited with sweet alluring words. Through signatures of essays yearswander like a stream sometimes eddying into deep pools other times crashingand breaking tossing father and friends onto a dry bank before racing forward.This fine celebratory book will make recollection flourish. Sam PickeringIn Blood and Memory Robert Benson charts a Southern boys adventurous growingup. Out of experience and stories overheard questions arise but in revisitinglost time he discovers understanding. In Bensons vision memory is redemptiveboth revealing and confirming lifes deeper meanings. Elizabeth Spencer «