Lawton Passage, by Tim Duning

In Lawton, Tennessee, the truth of growing up rarely fits neatly inside a Christmas newsletter. Tim Duning’s Lawton Passage follows Liam, a boy raised in his ancestral country home built in the 1840s, as he adjusts to small-town rituals, and the quiet pressures of Southern life during the 1960s and ’70s. Through thefts and schoolyard hijinks, swimming pool accidents, séances, paper routes, and first loves, Liam navigates a childhood and adolescence shaped by faith, family, and friendship—always measuring the perfection his father presents against the messy realities he experiences. From the explosive humor of sabotaged cigarettes to the tragedies of peer loss, the memoir captures the grit, grief, and laughter of growing up in a town that refuses to stay small. Forty years later, Liam returns to Lawton, tracing the echoes of his past, realizing that home and family live most vividly in stories, not land. Lawton Passage is a poignant, funny, and deeply honest meditation on legacy, memory, and the Southern art of storytelling.