An erratic memoir reflecting author William Frame's search for an existence both true to its time and free enough of it to be guided in moral and ethical matters by a higher order. He meets many fascinating concepts along the way-Liberal Education vs. Professional Training, Political Community vs. individualized associations, and Vocational Duty vs. self-indulgence. He learns to live in two worlds as a farm kid in Appalachia raised by urban Philadelphian parents. That experience deepens when he disappoints his father in childhood and creates a self-portraying myth to overcome it-that his adult life amounts to a repair of a miserable childhood. Along with prompting frequent and successful searches for achievement in both academic and corporate careers, this myth precipitates a misremembrance and repression of his adolescence: wrongly portraying those years as "miserable" and the later years as "restorative." The writing out of the two-worlds idea via the book corrected the narrative and restored Frame's capacity for vocational living- helped by the teachings he draws from the decline and death of his dear wife, Anne, of his youngest child, Kate, and from the companionship of his Border Collie, Rose.
