Description

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Strong-willed and charismatic, Lester Rozelle was school superintendent in the small East Texas town of Oakwood from the 1930s to the 1960's. A deep-rooted fixture in the community, he guided his schools through disastrous fires and the strained process of integration in President Lyndon Johnson's home state. When he began to show signs of Alzheimer's disease, the author had to watch the painful transformation of his proud father into a dependent and ultimately foreign person.

Into That Good Night is a son's gift. Seemingly powerless to do anything but witness the slow loss of his father's past, Ron Rozelle re-creates and reclaims his own past: the dusty streets, tired old houses, and wallpapered rooms of his childhood. Rozelle tells of his early, confused discovery of racial inequality, his induction into the military, his decision to become a teacher himself, and the deaths of his parents. Poignant and impressionistic, Into That Good Night is a heartbreakingly lyrical memoir whose fine cadences and shining images will echo for a long time to come.

"The author's skillful and compassionate writing brings both the father of his childhood and the man who could not remember the names of his own children to life. Lester died of a stroke in 1992, but this serves, as his son intended, as a moving tribute."
—Publishers Weekly


"I guess you're O.K. about your mother,• he says. It is a statement, but I can sense a well-disguised question hiding behind It. 
"Sure," I say. Knowing this to be not enough of a response, I dig ·around for something else. The problem is that I don't know what he's getting at.
"I miss her," I offer. 
He turns his pipe in his hand and studies it from several angles. We rock ever so· slightly, as if to remind our­selves that we're on a swing, and are quiet for so long that I think I've provid­ed a sufficiently satisfying response. 
"I don't know,• he finally says. "It's just that you were away when it all happened." He unzips his tobacco pouch and begins to reload his pipe; I know that he is fortifying himself for the discussion that he is determined to have. Heart-to-heart conversations have never come easy for him; he would rather listen than talk, and he is an absolute master at hiding his emotions. We never had the birds and bees lesson when I was growing up. He pushed that chore off on Diane's second husband, a charming but troubled man who danced through several years of our lives before mov­ing on to bother other people. 
"She was mighty sick," he says lighting his pipe.
A single, clear honk from a goose comes through the dark­ness; then several others join in. They aren't close enough to the orange moon to pick up any of it, and Oak­wood doesn't generate enough light to reflect off their white stomachs, so we can't see them. They sing us a few bars of their ancient traveling song, and then are gone.
"I know you two had some troubles." He puffs a few times to get the tobacco burning.
"You shouldn't think any of it was your fault." - From Into That Good Night

About the Author

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RON ROZELLE is the author of Into That Good Night (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), which was a finalist for the PEN American West Creative Nonfiction Prize and the Texas Institute of Letters Carr P. Collins Award. His first novel, Windows of Heaven, set in Galveston during the hurricane of 1900, was released by Texas Review Press in July of 2000. Chosen as Barnes and Nobles' Houston-area Featured Author for November, he lives in Lake Jackson, TX, with his wife Karen and their daughters and teaches creative writing and English.

Praise For…

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...wonderful, absolutely first rate in every way. It is beautifully written, with a strong voice.
—Dan Rather

"Like a stone washed smooth by the sea, Rozelle's language glows in the light and feels good in the hand. He shares the story of his father's life as superintendent of schools in the east Texas town of Oakwood. His father was quiet, orderly, sensible, and fair: he began that town's long journey toward school integration. Chapters toothsome with memories of Christmas, the pull and tug of siblings, and bootleg beer alternate with those chronicling the elder Rozelle's slippage into memory lapse and dementia. There's not a shred of sentimentality here, however; Rozelle's crystalline little memoir brings not tears but the joy of good things remembered, like the scent of "a nickel held tight in a sweaty palm on a hot day" or the childish lesson that half-past one was "not thirteen-thirty." Rozelle rejoices, and readers with him, in his sisters, in his tangled memories of his mother, and above all, in the legacy of his straight-arrow and genuinely good dad. Moving and joyous: like his dad, Rozelle is a teacher. His students are very lucky indeed."
—Booklist

"Rozelle splices together two eras in a potentially tricky structure that ultimately yields a spare, beautifully written memoir about fatherhood, bravery, memory and one man in particular. His recollection of his childhood in a small east Texas town also reconstructs his father, Lester, a once vigorous, strong-willed man whose own memory was decimated by Alzheimer's. Other sections from the early 1990s compare Rozelle's still-new experiences of paternity with his evolving relationship with his own father. When Rozelle, a high school English teacher, was growing up in Oakwood in the 1950s and '60s, Lester was the school superintendent of the "white" school, where he formerly taught, as well as of the town's "black" school. While Rozelle offers many details of life in a small Southern town, this is not an exercise in nostalgia. Lester was an upright man who publicly supported the Supreme Court decision that mandated school integration. That same quiet strength helped Rozelle deal with the death of his mother, who committed suicide after she was unsuccessfully treated for cancer. The author's skillful and compassionate writing brings both the father of his childhood and the man who could not remember the names of his own children to life. Lester died of a stroke in 1992, but this serves, as his son intended, as a moving tribute."
—Publishers Weekly

"In Rozelle's loving memoir of his late father, a longtime Texas school superintendent, we glimpse a dimly lit picture of an aging man whose character never quite emerges. The author, himself a high-school English teacher in the Houston area, alternates reminiscences of his youth with entries from 199192, when his father, Lester, began at age 85 ``to slip a bit,'' experiencing ``short moments of confusion, the hesitation before taking a step.'' Poignant scenes show Lester getting lost in the house; forgetting that his wife was not at the store, but instead out of town; and even failing to recognize his son: ``I have a son who teaches school,'' Lester informs Ron. Now, tell me again . . . Who are you?'' Sad but, in an 85-year- old, not tragic . And the author goes on to draw a shaky portrait of his fathers life in happier years. Flashing back to the1960s, when Lester faced the challenge posed by integration to his school system, Rozelle says little about his father's actual stance. Ditto Rozelle-the-elders stint as a political appointee under President Johnson and even when teaching at a prison. We do learn that the purchase of a fishing cottage (although he did not fish) and a car trip to Florida ``were exceptions to an otherwise predictable life.'' More vivid is the evocation of Rozelle's chain-smoking, ailing mother who, stoked with too many medicines, would ultimately shoot herself to death. And a powerful scene of youthful racism has the young Rozelle denying his black playmates to a group of taunting boys: ``They ain't my friends,'' he insists. Even a slight memoir has its moments. But the real story seems to lie buried somewhere below the surface of the authors recollections of good times with his mother and under Rozelle's reflections on his changing East Texas neighborhood."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Spare and understated, Into That Good Night is moving, clear eyed and rendered in limpid prose."
—The Houston Chronicle

"Like a stone washed smooth by the sea, Rozelle's language glows in the light and feels good in the hand. He shares the story of his father's life as superintendent of schools in the east Texas town of Oakwood. His father was quiet, orderly, sensible, and fair: he began that town's long journey toward school integration. Chapters toothsome with memories of Christmas, the pull and tug of siblings, and bootleg beer alternate with those chronicling the elder Rozelle's slippage into memory lapse and dementia. There's not a shred of sentimentality here, however; Rozelle's crystalline little memoir brings not tears but the joy of good things remembered, like the scent of "a nickel held tight in a sweaty palm on a hot day" or the childish lesson that half-past one was "not thirteen-thirty." Rozelle rejoices, and readers with him, in his sisters, in his tangled memories of his mother, and above all, in the legacy of his straight-arrow and genuinely good dad. Moving and joyous: like his dad, Rozelle is a teacher. His students are very lucky indeed."
—Booklist
— Booklist

"Rozelle splices together two eras in a potentially tricky structure that ultimately yields a spare, beautifully written memoir about fatherhood, bravery, memory and one man in particular. His recollection of his childhood in a small east Texas town also reconstructs his father, Lester, a once vigorous, strong-willed man whose own memory was decimated by Alzheimer's. Other sections from the early 1990s compare Rozelle's still-new experiences of paternity with his evolving relationship with his own father. When Rozelle, a high school English teacher, was growing up in Oakwood in the 1950s and '60s, Lester was the school superintendent of the "white" school, where he formerly taught, as well as of the town's "black" school. While Rozelle offers many details of life in a small Southern town, this is not an exercise in nostalgia. Lester was an upright man who publicly supported the Supreme Court decision that mandated school integration. That same quiet strength helped Rozelle deal with the death of his mother, who committed suicide after she was unsuccessfully treated for cancer. The author's skillful and compassionate writing brings both the father of his childhood and the man who could not remember the names of his own children to life. Lester died of a stroke in 1992, but this serves, as his son intended, as a moving tribute."
—Publishers Weekly
— Publishers Weekly

"In Rozelle's loving memoir of his late father, a longtime Texas school superintendent, we glimpse a dimly lit picture of an aging man whose character never quite emerges. The author, himself a high-school English teacher in the Houston area, alternates reminiscences of his youth with entries from 199192, when his father, Lester, began at age 85 ``to slip a bit,'' experiencing ``short moments of confusion, the hesitation before taking a step.'' Poignant scenes show Lester getting lost in the house; forgetting that his wife was not at the store, but instead out of town; and even failing to recognize his son: ``I have a son who teaches school,'' Lester informs Ron. Now, tell me again . . . Who are you?'' Sad but, in an 85-year- old, not tragic . And the author goes on to draw a shaky portrait of his fathers life in happier years. Flashing back to the1960s, when Lester faced the challenge posed by integration to his school system, Rozelle says little about his father's actual stance. Ditto Rozelle-the-elders stint as a political appointee under President Johnson and even when teaching at a prison. We do learn that the purchase of a fishing cottage (although he did not fish) and a car trip to Florida ``were exceptions to an otherwise predictable life.'' More vivid is the evocation of Rozelle's chain-smoking, ailing mother who, stoked with too many medicines, would ultimately shoot herself to death. And a powerful scene of youthful racism has the young Rozelle denying his black playmates to a group of taunting boys: ``They ain't my friends,'' he insists. Even a slight memoir has its moments. But the real story seems to lie buried somewhere below the surface of the authors recollections of good times with his mother and under Rozelle's reflections on his changing East Texas neighborhood."
—Kirkus Reviews
— Kirkus Review

"Spare and understated, Into That Good Night is moving, clear eyed and rendered in limpid prose."
—The Houston Chronicle
— The Houston Cornicle