Bill Henderson
Tower
Faith, Vertigo, and Amateur Construction
"Beautiful, moving, warm and wise...utterly compelling....Should become a classic."—Joyce Carol Oates
Bill Henderson had an epiphany one day after buying a plot of land high atop a hill in Maine overlooking the sea: why not build a tower "for no reason"? For this lapsed Presbyterian, it all made sense. With his spiritual life in neutral, his marriage struggling, his daughter growing up, a tower was no less appropriate than, say, hiring a shrink or buying a fast car. Ignoring the fact that he knew little about construction, and armed only with a hammer, a handsaw, a tri-square, a tape measure, and a rope, he set about erecting a modest tower upon his not-so-modest hill. Tower is Henderson's down-to-earth study of a sky-high subject that celebrates the dreamer in all of us.
"Perhaps the gentlest, sweetest, most introspective and humbling tower achievement in the history of towering achievements.(Bill Roorbach, Newsday
"Wonderfully engaging...makes you want to pick up a hammer and nails and get to work!"—George Plimpton
"[An] endearing, quixotic, vulnerable book about building a tower to save his life."—Edward Hoagland
"Should take its place on the shelf next to Thoreau's Walden....it's a blueprint for a simpler life."—Joseph Hart, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"[T]he quirkiest, most rambling and yet most charming self-help book that will appear this year."—Publishers Weekly starred review
"A strange and fascinating book."—Los Angeles Times Book Review, Thomas Curwen
Bill Henderson is the author of two memoirs, His Son and Her Father. He is the founder of The Pushcart Press.
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