Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a br5ight, unclipped dust jacket. First edition of author's first book. Pulitzer Prize finalist. Well conceived and well written, this book examines the tragedy of a man whose life epitomizes failure on every level. A victim of circumstances, Peter Jernigan is now emotionally crippled and psychologically impoverished. His already distorted personal relationships, skewed further by a dependency on alcohol, sweep him forward, with horrifying swiftness, into a nightmarish cycle of failure, loss, and spiritual death. Bright but unsuccessful, Jernigan drifts through a bleak life that only becomes worse. He has lost his father and wife in successive accidents and now must deal with the adolescent traumas of his only son. His encounter with the divorced mother of his son's girlfriend promises to lighten his life but instead complicates it even further. Clean copy.