A Small Tree in a Texas Hurricane

Robert Henry Benson grew up in the shadow of a state mental asylum in South Texas, where the boundaries between the ordinary and the strange were never quite fixed. Raised in hardship, he left school in the ninth grade, not because he lacked ability, but because life in rural South Texas in the 1950s had its own relentless curriculum. What followed was decades of improbable detours: construction scaffolding in San Marcos, a radio shop in Houston, a bull ride he probably shouldn't have survived, a chlorine gas incident that clarified certain priorities, and an unlikely passage through the corridors of academic physics. A Small Tree in a Texas Hurricane is the story of a mind that wouldn't stay put, and a life that kept bending without breaking. It is funny, plainspoken, and quietly astonishing; a memoir rooted deep in Texas soil, reaching toward something larger than anyone around him thought possible.