Many years in the making, from meticulous research, fieldwork, and interviews, to writing, Carol Sklenicka's Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life (Scribner) is the first, major, biographical work on the too-brief life and times of one of this country's great writers. It's a story lived and worked out in this region—to a considerable degree—from Ray Carver's childhood years in Yakima, on through to his last years, including his death in Port Angeles in August 1988. "A rich portrait of a master of the American short story. The life of Raymond Carver (1938 - 1988) hews closely to a heroic arc: a hardscrabble childhood, a noble struggle for success, a fall from grace, and ultimate redemption. But Sklenicka wisely avoids hagiography, sticking to the facings while astutely connecting real-life details to Carver's stories and poems ... Sklenicka spoke with nearly everyone in Carver's orbit, making the book a kind of history of American fiction in the '70s and '80s, capturing the crucial writers and sea changes in the publishing industry that made Carver such a powerful influence on writers today. The epic biography that Carver deserves." - Kirkus Reviews.