William March

Come in at the Door - Library of Alabama Classics William March

Marc Notes: Originally published 1934 by H. Smith and R. Haas. Review Quotes: "William March is one of the world's classic modern writers, a whole ionosphere above Faulkner, and the unrecognized genius of our time."--Alistair Cooke, "A William March Omnibus"Review Quotes: "The outstanding virtues of March's work are those of complete lack of sentimentality and routine romanticism, of a dramatic gift constantly heightened and sharpened by eloquence of understatement."--"New York Times"Biographical Note: William March was born in 1893 as William Edward Campbell in Mobile, Alabama, and grew up in the picturesque hamlets of coastal Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. He won fame for his World War I novel "Company K," whose success allowed him to devote himself to writing a large body of remarkable short fiction and novels that illuminate early twentieth-century southern life. Publisher Marketing: William March's debut novel, "Company K," introduced him to the reading public as a gifted writer of modern fiction. Of that World War I classic, Graham Greene wrote: "It is the only war book I have read which has found a new form to fit the novelty of the protest. The prose is bare, lucid, without literary echoes." After "Company K," March brought his same unerring style to a cycle of novels and short stories-his "Pearl County" series-inspired in part by his childhood in the vicinity of Mobile, Alabama. The University of Alabama Press is pleased to be bringing these three novels back into print. "Come in at the Door" is the first novel in the "Pearl County" series. Before dawn one morning, little Chester is taken by his nurse (his father's mistress) to the Athlestan courthouse. A sensitive and impressionable boy, Chester watches in horror while Baptiste, a mixed-race servant of his father's, is hanged for killing "a grotesque, dwarflike creature" who Baptiste believed had "laid a conjure" on him. Throughout Chester's rambunctious young manhood, the gruesome memory hovers just below the surface of his mind, recalled in detail only at his father's death, when the book sweeps forward to its shattering denouement.

Contributor Bio:  March, William William March (1893-1954) was born in Mobile, Alabama, attended Valparaiso University in Indiana, and studied law at the University of Alabama. He served in the Marine Corps during World War I and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy Cross, and the Croix de Guerre with Palm. After the war, he took a job with the Waterman Steamship Corporation, and worked there for eighteen years before giving up his position to devote himself to writing. March published three volumes of stories and six novels, including The Bad Seed, his final book.