A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Through the Eyes of a Child

Only Love Can Break Your Heart wasn’t the debut novel Ed Tarkington had in mind when he first started writing in earnest. But after turning out a very different novel that never found a publisher, Tarkington found his voice by mining his own family’s experiences. The protagonist of the resulting coming-of-age novel, Rocky Askew, is a boy growing up in a fractured upper-middle-class family in southern Virginia during the late 1970s. When Rocky’s older brother Paul goes missing, it is just another in a string of abandonments that haunt the Askew family and those who are close to them.

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