The Land and the Days

Book excerpt: "Memoir set largely in Walters, Oklahoma, tracing a community's development from the 1930s to the present. The narrator traces the story of his grandfather, Harry Tracy Daugherty, a man who devoted his life to public service. It is the story of changing political attitudes in southern Oklahoma, of growing awareness of race and class, and of dealing with the pervasive grief endured for lost loved ones. Unearthly Archives expands the realistic accounts of the first narrative, providing a meditation on the meaning of grief. The writer demonstrates his curiosity and indefatigable search for understanding and closure by searching his readings as they inflect his own experiences. Questions of the possibilities of an afterlife are superseded by the revelations in dreams. Whereas the first narrative explores daily family life, setting up what will be the huge loss of his parents, the second examines questions of death, grief, creativity, and the meaning of memory"--