Excerpt from Harrow by Joy Williams, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I felt his presence disappear then. Then of myself as well, I became no longer aware. I was neither awake nor asleep, nor could I know what was expected of me, for surely something would be expected?

My mother and father were preparing to leave the club. On the drive home my mother felt chilled and wanted my father's jacket to put over her shoulders but he refused. They were already out of love even then. He turned onto our lane, ignoring her as she theatrically pretended she was freezing. Blackberry bushes and wild roses and Queen Anne's lace lined the road. Every year, they and their few neighbors fought to keep it paved, but the councilmen, elected officials, he was forever reminding them, wanted it tarred. The whole matter would end up in court one of these days he feared. They probably would have to get together and hire a lawyer just to protect the false pastoral quality of the road. He said, "Did the power go off?"

The house was lit up like an altar with what must have been every candle my mother possessed. They'd gotten home earlier than they'd intended. Maybe he was entertaining a girl in there, my mother thought, amused.

My parents had misplaced their keys.

"What are you, drunk!" my father demanded when the young man finally appeared at the door. Candles were guttering everywhere and a two-hundred-dollar pot was seared and ruined on the stove. Yet no explanation or apology appeared forthcoming.

Never apologizing or explaining was how the men and boys of the club navigated their days, but such posturing by this presence infuriated my father.

"What are you, drunk!" my father demanded again, puzzled, aware that it was he and my mother who were half-cut from Fiesta Night.

My mother confessed to me that she had giggled—her irate husband, her absurd lover—it was all so preposterous—but she hurried into the nursery and with care picked me up.

"Thomas!" she screamed. "The baby's not breathing."

And then, as she told me, after an eternity, my father appeared and seized me from her arms. When she, in turn, tore me from his grasp, I cried out as I had at birth. And it was, my mother said, as if I were being born all over again.

My father had no more patience for my mother. In the time that was left for them, in the time they remained together, she never stopped wanting another baby, an extra one was perhaps her thinking, a replacement one were I to die again and not return.

"Lion," my mother begged. "We can name him Lion if he's a boy. We can name her Lion if she's a girl."

But my father ignored her. He spent less and less time in our pleasant house and more at the boatyard he managed. He even began designing his own boats, though he suspected that few people would still be sailing for pleasure in the future. The waterways were being increasingly compromised. The demand was for mammoth houseboats with fireplaces and hot tubs. He was disgusted with these vessels and the people who craved them. Still, he continued to refit and repair them. More and more he realized it was best not to try and change the minds of others, best not to resent or struggle. Even the road he had so recently loved, the sandy roller-coaster road leading to our house and beyond which he had sought so to preserve, he was going to let the neighbors have. Soon he would not live there anymore.

My mother's eager beauty faded, her reckless teasing ways. She became more and more convinced that I had died that night and had witnessed ruthless and troubling mysteries which it was essential for me to recall. I had experienced a great reversal and my life, or whatever it was that had been restored to me, must be subject to the most delicate and definitive interpretation. The fact that I was an awkward yet trusting and thoughtful child with few apparent gifts made my presence all the more properly intriguing in my mother's eyes. For were there not many stories of servants or otherwise utterly uncharismatic and unassuming persons turning out to be the enlightened ones who could lead others out of their lifeless lives and into a new contract with the world?

Excerpted from Harrow by Joy Williams. Copyright © 2021 by Joy Williams. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.