Hilltop in the Rain

This semi-autobiographical novel, published in 1928, is set in a fictionalised version of Birmingham, Alabama. Its central character, Morgan Henley, is a novelist working as an English literature lecturer at the local city college in an effort to support his young family. Though not as evocative of academic departmental life as Stegner’s Crossing to Safety or Williams’s Stoner, it remains an impressive depiction of the way in which the life of a literature lecturer suppresses the creativity of a talented writer and passionate thinker. On the entry into the war by the United States, Henley was “restless and sad at heart”, envying his friends who had the opportunity to serve. When he himself enlists, he's sent to Boston and is well trained in the use of the Lewis machine gun (“the tat-tat-tat of the gun was a thrilling music to him”). Before his training has been completed, however, the armistice is signed and he returns to his humdrum duties in the college.

The author, James Saxon Childers (born 19 April 1899), grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. He studied at Oberlin College, Ohio, interrupting his studies to serve in the war as a navy pilot. He graduated in 1920 and subsequently completed a primary and secondary degree as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. From 1925 to 1942, he was a member of the English department of Birmingham-Southern College and this experience forms the basis of this novel. His debut novel appeared in 1927 and was similarly semi-autobiographical, telling the story of a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. Perhaps his most important novel appeared in 1936; with the unimaginative title, A Novel about a White Man and a Black Man in the Deep South, it was a courageous challenge to institutionalised racism. Later in life, when working as editor of the Atlanta Journal, his progressive views on race relations cost him his job.

The central character, Morgan Henley, has a yearning to join the war effort:
“In reality he was no different from any other healthy, normal, high-spirited young fellow of 27, and in the late spring of 1918, the uniforms upon the streets of Iron City, the bands, the flags, the recruiting posters, the flaring headlines of the newspapers, combined to goad his spirit to a restlessness which caused a longing that was painful. All his friends, except those who were physically unfit or, like himself, were married and fathers, were away in training camps or in France.”