Keeper of the Moon

by Tim McLaurin

Recounting his journey toward recovery from bone marrow cancer, the author describes his childhood in the South and his experiences with cancer treatment

Genres: Memoir, Biography, Nonfiction

250 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1991

Reviews

[Matt Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a boy from small-town Eastern North Carolina, with a family full of hard-living poor whites similar to McLaurin's, this hit home. Hard. I may be 30 years younger than the late author, but much of what McLaurin writes about still is deeply true about the little rural and small town places across the South, and his observation about feeling so lost in a world where his children don't talk like he does, with the South changing so quickly, is even more true now than it was twenty years ago when he wrote this book. It's not a nostalgic book, as nostalgia has simplistic, reactionary connotations. Rather, this is a book that faces up to the realities of a world that is always, necessarily, in flux, but how the only way to deal with this is to draw on what made us, facing its horrors, beauties, and messy ambiguities.

Or maybe that's how Southerners have to face the world. Hell, it's how I have to face it. I read this and kept sitting and talking with myself, trying to figure out how I got from a world not totally unlike the one McLaurin describes, and ended where I am now. And how that world continues to recreate how I live. My wife has stuff she wants me to get done today. Which is good, because otherwise, I'd be about 4 fingers deep into a bottle of bourbon and thinking about the past, the beautiful, painful past with its long-leaf pines and jet-black dirt, of home.

Blue-staters who want to understand red-staters, who want to look at us as more than a bunch of unsophisticated hicks, start here. Yankees who've moved to the South and want to know why it is we get ill that you're changing so much, want to know what it is we feel like we're losing, start here (and then move onto McLaurin's comic masterpiece novel, Woodrow's Trumpet).

[Mary K · Rating 2 out of 5]

When you’re writing a rather bland memoir - i.e., there’s nothing dramatic about it - then you better have some gorgeous writing or interesting/funny stories. But there was just nothing. At one point, the author pauses to actually write a paragraph about how his siblings have turned out as adults. Weird. It was as if he was writing with his immediate family in mind. The book might have had the makings of a wonderful literary memoir but the author just couldn’t pull it off. I had attempted to read this book some years back and picked it up again in case my failure to finish the first time had been due to my mood, but nope, it’s just an uninteresting memoir with mediocre writing.

[Carl Weaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of the best books I have ever read about growing up and our continual evolution as we walk life's paths. McLaurin tells a tale that is honest, if sometimes unattractive and unflattering about his own life, but the book's strength lies in exactly that - its honesty. He does not sugar-coat anything but tells stories we can all relate to on some level, showing the beauty and horror of life. He tells it all and admits everything, neither reveling in triumph nor wallowing in self-pity.

Everyone should read this book. It is engaging enough for adults but written in such a way that children could also appreciate it. Far from a children's book, it weaves together tales from various parts of life, and emphasizes that the whole of our lives is a tapestry of stories that connect points in time, help us relate to each other, and make sense out of the past.

Tim McLaurin's departure from our lives is a sadness we all will feel when we read this book and know the richness we now miss, the strong voice whose words live on, if only from the printed page.

[David Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keeper of the Moon: A Southern Boyhood by Tim McLaurin (Anchor Books 1991) (Biography). Tim McLaurin's biography of Southern boyhood spoke directly to me. Like the author, this reader grew up in the South and came of high-school age in the early to mid-1970's. McLaurin grew up in the North Carolina Piedmont; his reminiscences of chicken fighting, coon hunting, visiting a first prostitute, catching cancer, and coming to terms with the Croatan Indians are all parts of Dixie that most Southerners of a certain age will understand (and may have experienced). I very much enjoyed the author's style and his stories. My rating: 7.25/10, finished 8/4/16. I purchased my (PB) copy which was in very good shape from McKay's Books on 7/25/16 for $1.50. PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

[John Hart · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably my favorite book of all time, definitely my favorite McLaurin book. To give people an open and honest look into your life is a remarkable and sometimes difficult thing to do. I had the pleasure of meeting Tim Mclaurin at a couple of book readings before he died. He was such an interesting guy, and we shared some common experiences, such as both having served in the Marines and close to the same age. All his books are tremendous. He left us way too soon.

[Brennan Donnellan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful and haunting autobiography about growing up in the same rural North Carolina communities in the 1960's where my mother was raised, and I lived until I was 5. It's also a confessional of alcoholic struggle. In between, there are poetic memories and vivid prose that makes you feel like you are there in that pine-scented North Carolina night air.

[Stella Fouts · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you grew up living in a four-square house (two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room) with no indoor plumbing, you will relate to this story. Heck, if you lived way better than Tim McLaurin and his four siblings did growing up in North Carolina, you'll STILL be able to relate to this story.

Tim is brutally honest about things he did as a child that aren't admirable - one incident in particular will shock you (I don't need to tell you which scene it is--you'll know immediately once you've read it.) And Tim's childhood - as a snake handler, a tobacco leaf picker, a dreamer - is very interesting, to say the least. His descriptions of a cockfight AND a pit bull fight put you right there as each unfolds. (You don't have to like what the characters are doing to appreciate the author's description of a particular event. It is what it is.)

I'm disappointed that I've just now discovered Tim McLaurin only to learn that he died in 2002 at the young age of 48. If only he'd had time to write more - he was a master at telling stories.

http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/reme...

[Glenn C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every once in a while, a line from one of Tim McLaurin's books jumps into my 'minds forefront' and screams for attention. Its not so much the fact that he was a local author, but that the time & place of his upbringing is evident in so much of his phrasing. I guess its a 'Southern' thing. You would have to have 'been there & done that' to know what I mean...

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tim McLaurin is no longer living, but readers of a certain time period will always treasure his recreation of time and place.

A friend described it best as prose that seems like poetry of the best kind.

[Frederick Bingham · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of the boyhood and growing up of Tim McLaurin. He was born and raised in a rural NC near Fayetteville. He spent a lot of time as a youth in a tough part of that town. He was raised a true redneck, and somehow managed to pull himself out of it. Beautiful writing.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

To read this book is to know this author on a deeper level. Great book by a great author. The world is less of a place without him in it.

[Brian Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a good story about a boy's childhood in the rural south.
This guy is a good storyteller with and makes good insights into human nature.

[Stephen Bessinger]

I read this book because one of the characters is loosely based on my paternal grandfather.

[Jeanine Duke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love his writing.

[Bill Petrie jr · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the GREATEST books I ever read ...

[Helen Worsham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is more of a man's book. Some parts I skipped...all those hunting passages. And the farm animal killings. The author does have a talent in description.

[Chelsea (thepageprincess) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a bittersweet read! The writing is good, wholesome, and honest. I enjoyed it.

[richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the prettiest prose I have ever read. Not always pretty subjects.

[chandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my heroes, a must-read for any devoted Southerner.