Mr. Crews had polio when young. His feet drew back, horrifyingly, and stuck to his rear end. He was told he would not walk again. (He slowly recovered use of his legs but retained a slight limp.) A year or so later, while playing, he fell into a vat of boiling water intended for scalding hogs. His skin slipped almost entirely off, as did his fingernails. He survived because his head did not go under. He was not yet 6. Scars would become a prominent theme in his work.

Image Ted Geltner

There were two books in the Crews household, the Bible and the Sears, Roebuck catalog. Mr. Crews made up stories about the unscarred men and women in the Sears universe; he figured they all knew one another.

After serving in the Marines, he attended the University of Florida on the G.I. Bill and fell into the orbit of Andrew Lytle, the head of the school’s creative writing department. Mr. Lytle was a Southern Agrarian who had taught Flannery O’Connor and James Dickey.

Mr. Lytle became a father figure to the young writer, but Mr. Crews felt he couldn’t please him. There are excellent and moving scenes in this biography that detail their interactions. The teacher wanted the student to slow down, to become more contemplative. Mr. Crews knew he had to write fast and hard.

One evening, while drinking in a backyard, Mr. Lytle told Mr. Crews to give his work more meaning. Mr. Geltner writes: “Harry got up from the table and began pulling up grass from the yard, putting pieces of grass in his mouth and violently chewing on it. ‘I don’t know how to give it meaning!’ he blurted. ‘I don’t know how!’” Mr. Crews never dedicated a novel to his mentor. He felt Mr. Lytle never quite approved of his work.

The suffering in Mr. Crews’s life did not abate. One of his sons drowned in a neighbor’s swimming pool at the age of 3. He wrote through years of rejection slips. He wrote several early novels that were not published. His work ethic never wavered.