SOME SWEET DAY

A knee high memoir of Gatewood Turnbolt, firstborn of four, in mixed commemoration of his father who was a farmer in the evangelical southlands until he became a soldier and then a killer (the time is World War II). Young Gatewood's unshaggy story, so stripped that it's not much more than an episode, has a few patchy asides on his early childhood (no more'n you'd find in Jesse Stuart) -- sliding down the cellar door; making a first suspenders-and-drawers field trip -- but mostly this is about his father's return from the war -- crippled and surly and far less in control of his temper which provokes him to swing a mean stick at anyone around and then kill Gatewood's little brother Rick -- ""hardly big enough to sin."" The ""old-timey"" background is rural real -- perhaps enough for a faded candid but hardly enough to compensate for the diminutive nature of the novel.