In Ron McLarty’s novel The Memory Of Running, Smithy Ide is a man of many vices. At 43, he lives alone in an apartment that he has never liked. He overindulges in food, alcohol, and tobacco. He has a dead-end job at a toy factory. He’s a man whose life has just happened to him, without any effort on his part to make it his own.

Then his parents meet a tragic end in an automobile accident.