Heaven's My Destination

by Wilder, Thornton

• ISBN13: 9780060088897
• ISBN10: 0060088893
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-01-01
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Meet one of Wilder's most memorable characters--his famous take on Don Quixote come to Main Street in the Great Depression--George Marvin Brush, traveling textbook salesman.

Author Biography

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) is an accomplished novelist and playwright whose works explore the connection between the commonplace and the cosmic dimensions of human experience. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928 for The Bridge of San Luis Rey, the second of his seven novels, and received the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for Our Town in 1938 and The Skin of Our Teeth in 1943. Wilder's hit play The Matchmaker was adapted as the musical Hello, Dolly! His work is widely read and produced around the world to this day, and his screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943) remains a classic psycho-thriller. Wilder's many honors include the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Table of Contents

Foreword by J. D. McClatchy	ix
CHAPTER 1 George Brush tries to save some souls in Texas and Oklahoma. Doremus Blodgest and Margie McCoy. Thoughts on arriving at the age of twenty-three. Brush draws his savings from the bank. His criminal record: Incarceration No. 2.	1	(18)
CHAPTER 2 Oklahoma City. Chiefly conversation. The adventure in the barn. Margie McCoy gives some advice.	19	(10)
CHAPTER 3 Good times at Camp Morgan. Dick Roberts' nightmares. Dinner with Mississippi Corey.	29	(15)
CHAPTER 4 Further good times at Camp Morgan. Important conversation with a girl named Jessie Mayhew. Dick Roberts' nightmares concluded. George Brush refuses some money.	44	(18)
CHAPTER 5 Kansas City. Queenie's boarding-house. First word of Father Pasziewski. George Brush drunk and disorderly.	62	(13)
CHAPTER 6 Kansas City. Sunday dinner at Ma Crofut's. More news of Father Pasziewski. A moment of dejection in a Kansas City hospital.	75	(15)
CHAPTER 7 Three adventures of varying educational importance: the evangelist; the medium; first steps in ahimsa.	90	(14)
CHAPTER 8 Kansas City. The courting of Roberta Weyerhauser. Herb's legacies.	104	(14)
CHAPTER 9 Ozarksville, Missouri. Rhoda May Gruber. Mrs. Efrim's hold-up man. George Brush's criminal record: Incarceration No.3.	118	(12)
CHAPTER 10 Ozarksville, Missouri. George Brush meets a great man and learns something of importance about himself. The trial.	130	(22)
CHAPTER 11 A road in Missouri. Chiefly conversation, including the account of a religious conversion. George Brush again sins against ahimsa.	152	(13)
CHAPTER 12 Kansas City. Serious conversation in a park. A wedding. Practically an American home.	165	(14)
CHAPTER 13 George Brush loses something. Last news of Father Pasziewski. Thoughts on arriving at the age of twenty-four.	179	(8)
Afterword by Tappan Wilder	187	(22)
Acknowledgments	209