Although Tom Scanlon would just as soon spend it alone, his ninetieth birthday becomes the occasion for a family gathering in the Midwestern town of Lone Tree. The unlikely celebrants take this opportunity to reconceive their visions of past, future, and family in their own grotesque and ultimately liberating ways. Ceremony in Lone Tree is a spare and beautiful work by one of America's great postwar authors.
Wright Morris (1910-98) wrote thirty-three books, including The Home Place and Plains Song (both available in Bison Books editions), and Field of Vision, which won the National Book Award. Keith Botsford is coeditor, with Saul Bellow, of The Republic of Letters. He has translated several books, among them Silvio D'Arzo's A Winter's Journal.