Strong-willed and charismatic, Lester Rozelle was school 
superintendent in the small East Texas town of Oakwood from the 
1930s to the 1960's.  A deep-rooted fixture in the community, he 
guided his schools through disastrous fires and the strained 
process of integration in President Lyndon Johnson's home state.  
When he began to show signs of Alzheimer's disease, the author 
had to watch the painful transformation of his proud father into 
a dependent and ultimately foreign person.


Into That Good Night is a son's gift.  Seemingly 
powerless to do anything but witness the slow loss of his 
father's past, Ron Rozelle re-creates and reclaims his own 
past: the dusty streets, tired old houses, and wallpapered 
rooms of his childhood.  Rozelle tells of his early, confused 
discovery of racial inequality, his induction into the military, 
his decision to become a teacher himself, and the deaths of 
his parents.  Poignant and impressionistic, Into That Good 
Night is a heartbreakingly lyrical memoir whose fine cadences 
and shining images will echo for a long time to come.



_________________________________________________________


RON ROZELLE is the author of Into That Good Night 
(Farrar, Straus, Giroux), which was a finalist for the PEN 
American West Creative Nonfiction Prize and the Texas Institute 
of Letters Carr P. Collins Award.  His first novel, Windows 
of Heaven, set in Galveston during the hurricane of 1900, 
was released by Texas Review Press in July of 2000. Chosen as 
Barnes and Nobles' Houston-area Featured Author for November, 
he lives in Lake Jackson, TX, with his wife Karen and their 
daughters and teaches creative writing and English.