A childhood friendship, a murder, and a moment of silence that survives for half a century.

Set in rural Illinois during the 1920s, William Maxwell's short novel begins with the killing of a tenant farmer and the subsequent disappearance of his son, Cletus Smith, from the narrator's life. Decades later, the narrator returns to these events, attempting to reconstruct not only what happened but what he failed to understand as a boy.

First published in 1980, So Long, See You Tomorrow moves between autobiography, fiction and imagined testimony. Maxwell reconstructs the private lives of people whose experiences he could never have fully known, filling the gaps in his memory with speculation while remaining acutely conscious of its limitations. What begins as an account of a rural tragedy becomes an examination of guilt, loneliness, parental loss and the moral obligations we carry towards people we have left behind.

Edition/Condition: The Harvill Press, 1997 British edition. Paperback. Good to very good condition, with light shelf wear and minor rubbing to the cover and edges. Pages appear clean and well preserved.