The publisher Alfred Knopf called William Humphrey's first novel, Home from the Hill (1958), the finest novel to come out of Texas. More than twenty years have passed since Knopf made the statement; and though a number of good Texas novels have appeared since then--two more by Humphrey himself--Knopf's judgment of the novel's place in Texas literature has not been questioned seriously. Though Humphrey's writings are almost all about his small corner of the state, and though he is definitely a regional novelist, his reputation is not confined to the Southwest, where he was born in the summer of 1924.

Humphrey spent his first thirteen years in Clarksville, Texas; and those years furnished him with the material for his three novels, almost all of his short stories, and his recent autobiographical volume-- Farther Off From Heaven (1977). The county seat of Red River County, Clarksville is in the far northeast corner...