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Visions of a Wayne Childhood

Brief, ironic sketches that originally ran on Radnor Patch are collected into this illustrated chapbook. The topics, such as "Best Friend," "Odd," or "Fall Away Presbyterians," suggest a template for profiling any home town, but in Henry's case, Wayne, PA, was known for its "unabashed elitism and its segregation," according to commentator David Brooks. Most of Henry's sketches are excerpted from his earlier memoirs, but are woven together and arranged here into a unified effect. Henry writes: "Contrary to the saying that you can't go home again, at a lifetime's distance, I believe that you can and should, and perhaps must, in memory and imagination. More than an exercise in nostalgia, I believe this to be an affirmation of distance and growth." Or, as Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Corpus Christi: Stories, put it: "DeWitt Henry ushers his readers to better understandings of their own histories."