Mercy of a Rude Stream - 3: From Bondage

More about the book

After the publication of his first novel, <i>Call It Sleep</i>, at the tender age of 28 in 1934, Henry Roth fell into a writer's block that lasted more than 40 years. He began writing again in the 1970s and <i>Mercy of a Rude Stream</i>, intended to be a six-volume series, is the result. A chronicle of the life of Ira Stigman, the first two volumes, <i>A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park</i> and <i>A Diving Rock on the Hudson</i>, were published in 1994 and 1995. Roth died in October of 1995, and the posthumously published <i>From Bondage</i> is the third in the series. Though the novel is full of observations and events from Roth's life, he was adamant before his death that this third volume was not autobiographical.