Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy

This extremely well written biography offers many of the satisfactions of a good novel: strong themes, sensitive appreciation of character, and a compelling protagonist. The author of The Moviegoer and Lancelot, Walker Percy, seems always to have been a solitary wayfarer, despite an enduring marriage and close friendships, including a lifelong one with novelist and Civil War historian Shelby Foote. In Jay Tolson's assessment, the weight of his father's and grandfather's suicides bore heavily on Percy, whose desire to escape his deadly family legacy undoubtedly had a bearing on his choice of the Catholic faith at age 31.