An account of the author's return to the South, after he inherits his Aunt Vidalia's home and precious memories, details his rediscovery of his heritage and tracing his roots by journeying through Louisiana and South Carolina. $50,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Power in the Blood: Land, Memory, and a Southern Family

Biographies & Memoirs

MAYS, John Bentley

Arts & Literature

Harpercollins

In this courageous memoir, John Bentley Mays gives us a riveting account of what it is to live in the shadow of debilitating depression. 
Weaving intimate recollections with excerpts from the diaries he kept for thirty years, Mays illuminates the struggle that leads to breakdown and the uneasy truce achieved through psychotherapy. Along the way, he offers provocative commentary on the allure of cure, the cultural scripts of normality, and the distorting mirror of clinical language. 
A literary tour de force that began with an award winning essay, In the Jaws of the Black Dogs is not an objective analysis composed from the safety of hindsight. It is a writer's attempt to evoke the silent and distorting malignancy--as well as the moments of reprieve--of the only life he has ever known. Above all, he offers readers hope: Although the black dogs cannot be entirely avoided, humor and the love and understanding of family and friends can keep the dogs at bay. 
From In The Jaws of the Black Dogs
"This book is a life with the black dogs of depression. I have written it in a clearing bounded by thickets roamed by the killing dogs, sometimes wondering, in the writing, whether I would complete it before they returned on silent paws to snatch the text and me away. For the depressed can never be sure we can finish anything we begin, or indeed certain of anything, except the black dogs' eventual return, and their terrible circling of the clearing's edge.
"There are a great many books about depression. This is not one of them. It is pain written, not observed; a depressive writer's writing, a testament transcribed from wounded flesh to paper in the clearing, before the black dogs' inevitable return."

In the Jaws of the Black Dogs: A Memoir of Depression

Harper

John Bentley Mays left the American South because, like many members of his generation, he believed a larger, more interesting life awaited him beyond his ancestral land . . . 
Decades later the death of Mays's aunt Vandalia summoned him back to Louisiana. He began to explore the secrets of Vandalia's house and his own past, and experienced a reawakening of feelings about his heritage--and the stereotypes and contradictions that exist in today's South. Moving through the Virginia tidewater forests, colonial plantations, and rural towns in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana where Mays's antebellum relatives lived throughout 400 years of American history, Power in the Blood is a poignant memoir composed during the course of one man's quest for truth.

Power in the Blood: An Odyssey of Discovery in the American South

Historical

Harper-perennial

Emerald City; Toronto Visited

Penguin Canada (APB)

Used Clean Copy of book with Minimal Amount of Wear. Ships Directly from Amazon!

In the Jaws of the Black Dogs : A Memoir of Depression

Penguin??Books

Both an extraordinary narrative and an honest exploration of the heart of the real American South, Power in the Bloodÿ is the account of one man's rediscovery of his Southern roots and heritage, forgotten during decades of self-exile from his homeland.The death of John Bentley Mays' Aunt Vandalia summons him back to the South, and Mays experiences an awakening of feelings and attitudes linked to his early life and family heritage, as he begins an internal exploration of the past.  The secrets he uncovers in Vandalia's home motivate him to set out for answers, through the Virginia tidewater forests his ancestors cleared, the Colonial plantations of his distant ante-bellum relatives and the towns in which they dwelt throughout almost 400 years of American history.  Along the routes of his quest, there are remnants of Faulkner, echoes of civil war and the spirits of colonial-era roads (now laden with stripmalls).Power in the Bloodÿ is about memory, and about the land that defines the blood and soul of a family over time.  Above all, it is the poignant tale of an encounter with the American past as it emerges during a search for the truth of one family.

Power In the Blood

Penguin,1998, c1997

Emerald city: Toronto visited

Viking/Allen Lane

In this courageous memoir, John Bentley Mays gives us a riveting account of what it is to live in the shadow of debilitating depression. 
Weaving intimate recollections with excerpts from the diaries he kept for thirty years, Mays illuminates the struggle that leads to breakdown and the uneasy truce achieved through psychotherapy. Along the way, he offers provocative commentary on the allure of cure, the cultural scripts of normality, and the distorting mirror of clinical language. 
A literary tour de force that began with an award winning essay, In the Jaws of the Black Dogs is not an objective analysis composed from the safety of hindsight. It is a writer's attempt to evoke the silent and distorting malignancy--as well as the moments of reprieve--of the only life he has ever known. Above all, he offers readers hope: Although the black dogs cannot be entirely avoided, humor and the love and understanding of family and friends can keep the dogs at bay. 
From In The Jaws of the Black Dogs
"This book is a life with the black dogs of depression. I have written it in a clearing bounded by thickets roamed by the killing dogs, sometimes wondering, in the writing, whether I would complete it before they returned on silent paws to snatch the text and me away. For the depressed can never be sure we can finish anything we begin, or indeed certain of anything, except the black dogs' eventual return, and their terrible circling of the clearing's edge.
"There are a great many books about depression. This is not one of them. It is pain written, not observed; a depressive writer's writing, a testament transcribed from wounded flesh to paper in the clearing, before the black dogs' inevitable return."

In the Jaws of the Black Dogs: A Memoir of Depression.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Viking, Toronto, 1995

Power in the Blood: Land, Memory and a Southern Family

Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Penguin Books Canada, Limited, 1997

Both an extraordinary narrative and an honest exploration of the heart of the real American South, Power in the Blood  is the account of one man's rediscovery of his Southern roots and heritage, forgotten during decades of self-exile from his homeland.The death of John Bentley Mays' Aunt Vandalia summons him back to the South, and Mays experiences an awakening of feelings and attitudes linked to his early life and family heritage, as he begins an internal exploration of the past.  The secrets he uncovers in Vandalia's home motivate him to set out for answers, through the Virginia tidewater forests his ancestors cleared, the Colonial plantations of his distant ante-bellum relatives and the towns in which they dwelt throughout almost 400 years of American history.  Along the routes of his quest, there are remnants of Faulkner, echoes of civil war and the spirits of colonial-era roads (now laden with stripmalls).Power in the Blood  is about memory, and about the land that defines the blood and soul of a family over time.  Above all, it is the poignant tale of an encounter with the American past as it emerges during a search for the truth of one family.

Power in the Blood

HarperAudio

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