In the Shade of Arrows: A Memoir

In the Shade of Arrows is the story of Harvey Mudd, born into a Los Angeles family of wealth, prestige, and respectability that traces its lineage back to the pilgrim fathers, a family in which patriotic attachment to America would be assumed. Mudd reveals, however, that his mother and father were not what they seemed. In a life-long search for their true stories, he discovers that the America he was taught to believe in is not what it seems either. In 2005, as a gesture of protest over Bush’s America, he leaves America to live in France.

Mudd recounts a childhood sheltered behind the façade of wealth and manners in which there were pervasive secrets. He describes his adolescent struggles to escape his mother’s incomprehensible behaviors, and his later efforts to create a productive life out of this mixed “heritage” of privilege, cruelty, and oppression. It is a life that includes a love of books, an emotional breakdown, living abroad, military service, farming, environmental work, brushes with the Mafia, critically acclaimed books of poetry, and the follies of inappropriate business ventures.

Pages: 1 2