Title: Praise Blue Skies
Description: This bittersweet boyhood memoir from the 1950s moves through disparate, bygone places -- a small, poor crossroads in segregated Arkansas, an Oklahoma mental hospital, an isolated ranch bunkhouse without electricity, and a prairie town with Route 66 as main street. Drawn from episodic childhood memories and family letters, this book tells the story of an unusual boyhood -- of love, loss, redemption and dreams in search of a self -- and the story of a family's survival and success under the steady, sunny and determined presence of a strong mother.
Subjects: mental illness, drug addiction, boyhood memories, baseball, suicide, single mother, Route 66
Places: Oklahoma, Tulsa, Vinita, Wooster, Ohio, Hampton, Arkansas, Eastern Oklahoma State Hospital
People: Wendell White, Margaret White, Tom White
Time periods: 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s