Tower: Faith, Vertigo, and Amateur Construction

by Bill Henderson

"Beautiful, moving, warm and wise...utterly compelling....Should become a classic."―Joyce Carol Oates Bill Henderson had an epiphany one day after buying a plot of land high atop a hill in Maine overlooking the why not build a tower "for no reason"? For this lapsed Presbyterian, it all made sense. With his spiritual life in neutral, his marriage struggling, his daughter growing up, a tower was no less appropriate than, say, hiring a shrink or buying a fast car. Ignoring the fact that he knew little about construction, and armed only with a hammer, a handsaw, a tri-square, a tape measure, and a rope, he set about erecting a modest tower upon his not-so-modest hill. Tower is Henderson's down-to-earth study of a sky-high subject that celebrates the dreamer in all of us.

Genres: Nonfiction

275 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2000

About the author

Bill Henderson (born April 5, 1941) is an American author, editor and publisher best known for his memoirs and the Pushcart Prize series.

Reviews

[Logan]

Loved the spirit of this book (a modern day Walden essentially) but wasn’t fond of the author’s more personal embellishments; it is strange that in a book where the point is to show how building the tower gave him purpose and sanity in a hard time, the tower was the much more interesting part while I sort of winced my way through some of the more personal stuff.

[Corey Mesa]

Great book about one mans quest to build his own tower. Lots of personal stories and comments on religion. Being a shop teacher I loved the descriptions of how he built the tower.