ANCESTORS is William Maxwell's deep dive into his own family history. I have read at least a half dozen Maxwell books, all of them compelling, deeply moving, and rendered in his trademark elegant style. This one was a bit dry, especially the first third or so, as he detailed the far-removed "great-greats" and even further back - all that genealogy - but got a lot more interesting when he reached deeply into the lives of his own grandparents and parents and their Illinois roots. His own mother died when he was just seven, a loss which affected, perhaps even scarred, him deeply, and was reflected in many of his stories and novels. There are a number of fascinating skeletons in the Maxwell and Blinn family closets, making for some very good reading. I've had this on my shelf for a good ten years, so I'm glad I finally read it. Recommended for all who love Maxwell's work.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )

William Maxwell was born in 1908 in Lincoln, Illinois. When he was fourteen, his father, an insurance executive, moved the family to Chicago. My grandrather James Lyle McCormick was born in the same county of Illinois in 1898. Like Maxwell, his mother also died when he was young, and his father, also an insurance executive, also moved the family to Chicago where James went to high school in the Austin neighborhood and attended the University of Chicago after serving in WWI. Maxwell's family attended the Christian Church as did the family of James Lyle McCormick's mother, the Housers. Maxwell is a talented writer and gives an account of his ancestry which closely parallels my own. Particularly he gives detailed accounts of the formation of the Christian Church by Barton Stone which took place hear the same place in Kentucky where our Morrows and Vaughans lived and within the same Washington presbytery where the Gillilands were members.

I'm sure his ancestor sand mine knew each other. The writing is beautiful and the feeling of the history is very similar to my own fatasy of how I would like to write a history of our family. ( )