<p>Once upon a time, Delaney Walker's life was filled with warmth and love and family and friends, expectations and desires and happiness. Then a disastrous lifelessness set in. Living became painful to him, too painful to endure until the end of time.Delaney, retired after teaching for over thirty years at university level, had become filled with despair and was trying to understand why. On the morning of February 25, 2004, Delaney was afflicted with enough serious mental derangement to warrant a psychiatrist's enrolling him into what Delaney facetiously came to call "The Depressing Society of the Deeply Depressed." Unlike many societies, this one has no proud members. It is a very large community containing millions of associates and is quite exclusive, because nobody - absolutely nobody - gets in without proper credentials.H. G. Hastings-Duffield grew up in West Virginia, moved to Michigan during the early years of World War II, and now lives near Atlanta. He says, "Had I remained in West Virginia, I likely would be dead from black lung disease. The move afforded me the opportunities to earn two universities degrees, teach thirty-five years at three universities, and write for the edification of fellow citizens." This is his seventeenth book.</p>