Paper Hero

Book excerpt: In this charming volume, popular Texas columnist Leon Hale recalls with wit and poignancy his early life, from birth to college through combat duty in World War II to his first job. By tums touching and hilarious, Paper Hero provides a personal look at Depression era life, as the Hale family chases an elusive prosperity from town to town across the West Cross Timbers of Texas. Difficult though the times were -- with the frequent absence of his traveling salesman father and several periods of real hardship -- there was much to smile at, too. In his graceful prose Hale renders vividly for us his youthful delight at games like tin-can shinny; his rueful discomfort at the limitations church membership placed on a growing boy's freedom of expression; his admiration for his father's joyous showmanship and for his mother's ability to draw comfort from the beauty of ordinary things. Also, for the first time in print he talks about his lifelong aversion to mirrors and the reason for it. Hale's style, clear and musical in its rhythms, evocative of laughter and pain within a single paragraph, is a masterful achievement masked by its deceptive simplicity. Every page of this remarkable book breathes with humanity and heart.