THE SUICIDE OF ROSS LOCKRIDGE, JR.: AUTHOR OF RAINTREE COUNTY

by Ernest Lockridge

Why did my father, Ross Lockridge, Jr., execute himself while his first novel, Raintree County, was the Nation's number one bestseller? Raintree County was a Book of the Month Club main selection. It had won the highly publicized MGM novel prize. A long excerpt appeared in LIFE, America's premier organ of popular culture which had hitherto not published fiction before. The novel was an informal contender for becoming the mythical Great American Novel. He went to his death in full knowledge that his life, viewed from the street, exceeded all but the most extravagant of human dreams. This story is grounded personally, and in the culture of the time--e.g., the Kinsey Institute, andthe Hollywod of Elizabeth Taylor, Motgomery Clift, Eva Marie Saint. Wardell Pomeroy, Kinsey's colorful wing man, was our Bloomington, Indiana neighbor, and as a child horsing around with the Pomeroy kids I became privy to peculiarities that shed light on my father's place in history, and on the covert culture of pervasive pedophilia, incest, and childhood sexual abuse, cocooned by institutional protection and denial, and permitted to persist, and to wreak unacknowledged havoc in the lives of innocents to this day.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1793077177
• ISBN13: 9781793077172
• Release Date: January 2019
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 165 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.4" x 5.0"