When work took Tracy Daugherty from his family’s roots in Oklahoma to the unfamiliar landscape of Oregon, his move mirrored the western migrations of so many earlier Oklahomans devastated and displaced during the Dust Bowl years. Deeply unsettled by the change in his surroundings and shaken by the recent Oklahoma City bombing, Daugherty took the opportunity provided by his own journey to explore the shattering and rebuilding of community in the America of today and yesterday. Speaking with survivors of the Murrah building bombing, revisiting his roots, and retracing the paths of exile and migration in the American West, Daugherty creates a diverse and heartfelt portrait of America in an uncertain time—its people, its politics, its music, and its poetry—a sobering but ultimately hopeful view of the national community. At heart an exploration, from an intimate vantage point, of the consequences of violence in contemporary America, Five Shades of Shadow will hold special resonance for readers struggling to come to terms with trauma and loss.

Reader Reviews

Jen Hirt

(4/5)

Jul 18, 2010

Daugherty knew Midland, Texas and Oklahoma City long before the rest of us associated those places with Bush and McVeigh. In this memoir, he revisits and reclaims those places in often heartwrenching style. He's torn-up and haunted by McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing; he's irritated that the mainstream media sets the tone for what type of town Midland is. Add to that Daugherty's fascinating with Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and the exodus of the Okies, and you have a tightly woven and co...

James Langston

(5/5)

Mar 26, 2013

Charlotte Hogg

Apr 02, 2011

Seth Sawyers

(0/5)

Jan 13, 2010

Christen

Oct 15, 2010

Ariane Pineda

May 31, 2014

Miriam Frankl

Nov 24, 2015

Elizabeth

Jan 24, 2016

John Casey

Jan 25, 2016

Kim

Jul 07, 2016

BookDB

Sep 13, 2016

Eric

Apr 05, 2018

Michael

Feb 23, 2019

Madison Leigh

Jul 29, 2020

James P. Stroke

Apr 19, 2021

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Popular Genres

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Five Shades of Shadow

Five Shades of Shadow

Five Shades of Shadow

More books from Tracy Daugherty

Sixty Stories

Donald Barthelme

The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion

Tracy Daugherty

Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme

Tracy Daugherty

Just One Catch: A Biography of Joseph Heller

Tracy Daugherty

Leaving the Gay Place: Billy Lee Brammer and the Great Society

Tracy Daugherty

Dante and the Early Astronomer: Science, Adventure, and a Victorian Woman Who Opened the Heavens

Tracy Daugherty

One Day the Wind Changed: Stories

Tracy Daugherty

Ploughshares Fall 2019

Ladette Randolph

High Skies

Tracy Daugherty

Let Us Build Us a City

Tracy Daugherty

The Woman in the Oil Field: Stories

Tracy Daugherty

Desire Provoked

Tracy Daugherty

Best of the West 2009: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri

James Thomas

It Takes a Worried Man: Stories

Tracy Daugherty

Axeman's Jazz: A Novel

Tracy Daugherty

What Falls Away

Tracy Daugherty

The Boy Orator: A Novel

Tracy Daugherty

The Empire of the Dead

Tracy Daugherty

Five Shades of Shadow

Tracy Daugherty

Late in the Standoff: Stories And A Novella

Tracy Daugherty

Unchartable: On Environmental Unknowns

Tracy Daugherty

American Originals: Novellas and Stories

Tracy Daugherty

The Land and the Days: A Memoir of Family, Friendship, and Grief

Tracy Daugherty

148 Charles Street: A Novel

Tracy Daugherty

Reader Reviews