Instead, we soldiered on, guided by my mother's favorite injunction: 'courage.'"
Family Inspires Love of Reading
Carter's parents encouraged his love of books. "My father was never a mean drunk, and he read to me nightly when he was able. We read cowboy books, pirate books, dog books. A lot of it was junk, but he never minded. . . . I started writing down some of my own stories when I was eight or nine. They weren't very good, but I do recall the feeling of amazement and power when my sister cried on hearing my story of an ill-starred racehorse named Percy. I still tell that story when I visit schools but I've added a twist, saving Percy at the last minute and sending him off to live happily ever after."
The summer of his sophomore year in high school, Carter and his family vacationed in Europe together. That autumn, his father was diagnosed with throat cancer and died within a matter of months. "It was hard," the author related. "He was a troubled but kind and decent man. He died with a lot of courage. We missed him a lot."
After graduating from high school, Carter spent the summer at the family cabin in northern Wisconsin, where he met his future wife and sometime collaborator, Carol Ann Shadis.
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