Summary

The narrator confesses that he didn’t write to Sonny for a long time after his arrest, not until just after the death of his little girl, Gracie. Sonny’s letter in response makes him feel like a bastard. Sonny writes that he really needed to hear from his brother, but that he hadn’t written because he understood how much he must have hurt his older brother. Sonny feels like a man trying to climb out of a deep and funky hole. He is glad that Mama and Daddy are dead, so they can’t see what has happened, and he is sorry he hurt other fine people who believed in him. Sonny insists that his heroin use has nothing to do with being a musician. Regarding Gracie, Sonny wishes he could be like Mama and say “the Lord’s will be done,” but he...