Relative Distance: A Memoir

Pruitt, former CEO of the retailer Performance Bicycle, delves into his traumatic Southern upbringing and how his faith helped him build a life and career, in this unpolished if uplifting memoir. Growing up in Greensboro, N.C., in the 1960s, Pruitt was insecure about his unhappy childhood home and embarrassing facial cysts. His mother suffered from mental illness and his father was physically and verbally abusive. Yet, Pruitt writes, he cultivated the courage and the self-esteem that was initially suffocated by his father (“I didn’t have time for dreaming,” his father derides) with the encouragement of business mentors, fictional father figures like Andy Griffith, and his Christian faith (“Talking with God makes me feel like I’m not alone in my struggles”). His two older brothers, however, became vagabonds after being kicked out of their home by their father, their histories related in a sympathetic yet broadly disapproving tone. Events are often teased in fractured vignettes before Pruitt fills in the gaps, among them the author being forced as a child to wear his urine-soaked underwear on his head, his brother sleeping in a park, and a business meeting with financiers as his company teetered on the brink. The writing is prosaic, but well paced. Pruitt’s bootstrapping mentality should appeal to fellow boomers, particularly those of faith. (Nov.)