If you hold a "day job" while writing during your "spare time," do I have a book to inspire you to keep reaching for your dreams. As I Lay Dying was written in less than two months while William Faulkner worked the night shift at a Mississippi power plant. Published in 1930, this classic is now taught in high schools and universities around the world. And for decades, it has retained its spot as my all-time favorite novel.

Critics hail the book for its innovative structure: 59
chapters written from the points of view of no fewer than 15 separate characters. I love it for the dark humor that offers rich insight into the lives of family members who struggle to find their individual places in a world of poverty, complex interrelationships and age-old traditions.

Each character is as memorable as any you will find in all of literature; and when so many strong characters inhabit the same family on the same bizarre journey, you are bound to be drawn to their story. In short, this is the tale of the Bundrens, rural folk from Faulkner's famous fictional Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi, who set out in the middle of a flood to bury Addie, the mother of the family, before her corpse rots. Anse Bundren, her husband and easily one of the laziest and most selfish men ever to live, leads the expedition to a town miles away to honor her wish. Or does he actually have more self-serving reasons to place his family in such peril? Accompanying him are his three adult sons (one not truly his), their pregnant teen daughter and their one son who is still a child.

As these family members and their neighbors take turns narrating the story, we learn more and more layers of their histories, betrayals, broken dreams and fragile aspirations.
During the nine day journey they fall victim to near drowning, arson, broken bones, a botched abortion attempt, family strife, mental illness, guilt and the stench of their decomposing mother. And yet, no story can lay claim to being more darkly funny than theirs. With a closing line that rivals the best humor of Mark Twain, the story closes one chapter, at least, in the lives of people you will never be able to forget.

If you are a woman who has ever worried you are not 100% fulfilled by your roles as mother and wife, you will find so much in the story of Addie. If you are a sibling who has ever grappled with the fallout of parental favoritism, you will understand the depth of the tension between sons Darl and Jewel. If you have ever felt like the only pragmatic and responsible person in a family of flakes, you will identify with Cash, who saws away at his mother's coffin as the rest of the family falls apart.

We may live in a world far apart from rural Mississippi at the onset of the Great Depression, but I guarantee you will be transported to that world through Faulkner's brilliantly drawn characters. Their story is as timeless, universal and philosophically profound as any tale has ever been. And to think Faulkner wrote this masterpiece on a table improvised from a wheelbarrow during his night shifts as a power plant worker.