In "Battlegrounds of Memory" Clay Lewis crosses seven generations of his family to illuminate a heritage of romantic hope and abject defeat, seeking freedom from the past by understanding it. His story is a cry from the heart, reaching into the depths of a family's collective soul and finding hope in the midst of despair.

Heritage was a heavy burden on Lewis's parents, children of the South whose denial of their past bound them more tightly to it. Their battles with each other and their son followed old patterns of intergenerational conflict. The book opens with a harrowing scene in...