In Rooms of Memory

This exquisite, mature collection of personal essays by Hilary Masters offers a rare pleasure. One of the most illustrious contemporary essayists transfigures incidents and observations into something far more-a finely crafted window into the workings of experience and memory. Masters makes readers privy to a youthful love affair; an adolescent's discovery in Defoe's Robinson Crusoeof the key to an immigrant grandfather's plight; and the significance of growing trees, making gravy, and playing cards. He draws intimate portraits of such characters as his famous father, Edgar Lee Masters; his literary friends Wright Morris and William Humphrey; and the strangers who both complicated and enriched his life. In glimpses of moments from naive youth through heady young adulthood to aging maturity, these essays tell the story of a life deeply, broadly, and thoroughly lived.