William Wharton

The author reflects on his family's decision to live on a houseboat on the Seine, detailing the renovation of a crippled vessel, the excitement and adventure experienced by his family, and the French lifestyle.

In August of 1988, heavy black smoke engulfed an Oregon highway, causing a massive 23-car pileup that claimed the lives of novelist William Wharton's 36-year-old daughter, her husband, and their two infant daughters. They'd been victims of field burning, a routine agricultural practice, and were burned alive in their van. How could such a thing happen? And how could a father come to terms with such a loss? Ever After, Wharton's first memoir, is...

Middle-aged John Tremont must cope with a mother who is dying, a father who is withdrawing, and a son who is impatient for adulthood.

Wharton's eighth novel is an exquisite love story set in Paris in 1975. Jack, a 49-year-old American, has walked out on his lucrative corporate career and troubled marriage to return to his first love, painting. He lives a disciplined, hand-to-mouth existence, struggling to express his long-suppressed feelings in his paintings. While working in a park and blocking the sidewalk, an elderly blind woman walks into him, knocking him off his feet and getting...

"Tidings is an absorbing story of family life. It is also a remarkably candid and emotionally intimate self-portrait of a man struggling to understand both his own feelings and the feelings of those dear to him. It is a compassionate novel about the power and mystery of love, the miracles and disappointments of individual growth and change and the wonder of a season that perennially brings good tidings and hope for new beginnings."

A work-obsessed man returns home when his mother is hospitalized, and finds that his father, whom he hasn't seen for 2 years, has deteriorated. Through careful nurturing the young man revitalizes his father and reestablishes a close relationship with him.

Two friends arrive back from Vietnam, scarred in different ways. One has physical injuries, the other has mental problems that make him yearn to be a bird, a subject he has always been fascinated with.