Least Likely Suicide: The Search for My Father, Ross Lockridge, Jr., Author of Raintree County

Abstract

“Ross Lockridge, Jr. took his own life on March 6th, 1948, two months following publication of his best‐selling novel, Raintree County. The thirty‐three year old author from Indiana left his wife and four children. His second son, Larry Lockridge, five years old at that time, has undertaken a search for answers to what has been called the greatest single mystery in American letters. Here, he describes the psychology of survivorship as well as the convergence of factors that led to suicide—personality disorder (narcissistic), biological (possibly genetic) predisposition to depression, and cultural factors related to success in the United States. A merging of such interpretive methods may be more productive than a privileging of one over the other.”