Spellbound: Growing Up in God's Country

by David W. McKain

In this award-winning memoir, a poet recalls his difficult childhood as the son of a poor lay preacher in a Pennsylvania mountain town.   In Spellbound, David McKain brings readers inside the secret world of a boy growing up in "God's Country," a small oil-drilling town in the Allegheny Mountains through the forties and fifties. His devoutly religious parents, overwhelmed by their own struggles, relinquished their son's upbringing to the town and the wooded slopes that encircled it.   Cutting school, straying from Boy Scouts, dropping out of church choir, McKain maneuvered away from control and into the joys and trials of adolescent discovery. Winner of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction, Spellbound is an unforgettable story of a family enmeshed in tenderness and poverty, faith, and affliction.

Genres: Memoir

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 1988

Reviews

[Kathie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good measure of this book's appeal for me is the setting. This is a memoir about growing up in my own hometown. McKain's evocation of the wooded mountains of northern Pennsylvania's oil country conjures up big emotions for me--it's home, and it's an area that doesn't merit much attention from anyone else anywhere. Literary mentions of people and places I know are not common happenstances in my normal reading life.

Going in, my expectations weren't high: small town author, sticky sweet title, yada yada. But the story was written with great poignancy, especially since I'm aware that in later years the author fell victim to the same dementia that he describes in the book, afflicting both his mother and grandmother.

All in all, a very happy reading surprise.

[Cheryl · Rating 1 out of 5]

The further I got into reading this book, the less I liked the narrator--which makes enjoying an autobiography almost impossible. He seemed so uncaring and oblivious at times, especially regarding his narcissistic, unpredictable father. I couldn't fathom why he would crave the attention of a man who would beat his wife in his son's presence without a modicum of remorse. I also couldn't understand why the son never tried to intervene. Spellbound got glowing reviews, but not from this reader. It's just an unhappy book.