Product Description

The Ingledew saga follows six generations through 140 years of abundant living and prodigal loving in a book that was praised as one of the year's best novels by the American Library Association. Drawings by the Author

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1149537 in Books
• Published on: 1987-12-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Harington follows the fortunes of the brothers IngledewJacob and Noah and their descendants, founders and proud citizens of Stay More, Ark., for 150 years. PW praised Harington's "lyric tongue-in-cheek satire."
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Harington has succeeded in creating one of the finest novels in recent years. -- Library Journal

You don't have to be from Arkansas to to appreciate this robust and rollicking novel... -- Columbus Dispatch

About the Author
Although he was born and raised in Little Rock, Donald Harington spent nearly all of his early summers in the Ozark mountain hamlet of Drakes Creek, his mother's hometown, where his grandparents operated the general store and post office. There, before he lost his hearing to meningitis at the age of twelve, he listened carefully to the vanishing Ozark folk language and the old tales told by storytellers. His academic career was in art and art history because, although determined to become a novelist (he wrote his first one at six), he felt that his ultimate teaching vocation should not interfere with his writing. He has taught art history at a variety of colleges in New York, New England, South Dakota and finally at his alma mater, the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where he has been lecturing for fifteen years in the same room where he first took courses in art history. He lives in Fayetteville with his wife Kim. His first novel, THE CHERRY PIT, about Little Rock, was published by Random House in 1965, and since then he has published twelve other novels, most all of them set in the Ozark hamlet of his creation, Stay More, based loosely upon Drakes Creek. These include LIGHTNING BUG, SOME OTHER PLACE. THE RIGHT PLACE., THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE ARKANSAS OZARKS, THE CHOIRING OF THE TREES, and, most recently, THIRTEEN ALBATROSSES. He has also written books about artists. He won the Porter Prize in 1987, the Heasley Prize at Lyon College in 1998, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 1999 and that same year won the Arkansas Fiction Award of Arkansas Library Association. John Guilds in his anthology, ARKANSAS, ARKANSAS, wrote, "if Miller Williams ranks as the greatest poet born, bred, nurtured, and still living in Arkansas, Donald Harington is by the same standards Arkansas's greatest novelist." The Winter 2002 SOUTHERN QUARTERLY is a "Donald Harington Special Issue" with tributes from fellow novelists, scholarly essays, interviews, and a selection of his forty-year correspondence with William Styron.

Customer Reviews

One of the best Unknown Books
The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks is a sprawling epic. It spans at least five generations and it all takes place in the Arkansas Ozarks in a town called Stay More (the residents of which are called "Stay Morons.") It begins when Jacob Ingledew and his brother Noah arrive and are greeted by the only remaining Native American: Fanshaw (who lives with his wife in a bigeminal hut that resemble large and pointy breasts). This is where the story begins and it doesn't stop...never losing momentum...the plot always moving forward...and as the plot moves forward so does the setting, and this book is as much a history lesson as it is a character study. We experience, through these marvelous characters, The Civil War, World War I, the Depression, World War II and all the PROG RESS that comes in between.

It is also important here to point out the book's greatest virtue: it's humor. This book is absolutely hysterical. I found myself laughing out loud all throughout. There isn't a page where you won't smile either externally or internally. The humor is the best sort of humor you can find in a novel---the type of humor where it won't be funny unless it's in the context of the book. Harington creates a world and the humor he finds in it are all "inside" jokes that you, the intrigued reader, get to be a part of. And the narrator himself is a fascinating presence--omniscient, but a real part of the story. The last few chapters will absolutely blow your mind.

An architect who can write!
I was drawn to this book because I am an architectural historian and avid reader of historical novels. I was unprepared for the book's incredible creativity and humor. The author's genuine love and compassion for the simplest of his characters is heartwarming. And best of all, this is a shaggy-dog story to end all shaggy-dog stories. PS I learned a lot about architecture along the way!

Ozarkian epic
As an Arkansas native and as one who has spent decades living and working in the Ozarks I felt qualified to add a few comments. The area he describes as "Stay More" is an area I have covered on foot doing research and recreation. Some of my best friends are from that region, Murray, Swain, Edwards Junction, and Deer, so it really "hits home".
When Harrington writes about ,"Stay More" he is inspired but when he strays from this less than idylic community the inspiration thins. Regardless, I would reccommend this book to anyone and am proud that an Arkansas author has picked up the torch that was once carried by Vance Randolph. Oustanding!