Literary diversions

Although we overlapped slightly at The Times, I never met Chuck Powers, who left the paper to write novels only to die of a rare blood disease shortly before his first book, the critically acclaimed "In the Memory of the Forest," was published in January 1997.

So even though we were nominally colleagues, Powers was something of a discovery for me and I grilled current and former co-workers about him. Everyone, without exception, praises "Forest," which is set in Poland.

I'm pleased to present a Powers story published May 11, 1969. It's quite a compelling piece of work. It is interesting to speculate on what he might have produced had he not died at the age of 53.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3