A Golf Vacation in Asheville

From this vow rose the plaintive title of Wolfe’s final novel, You Can’t Go Home Again, published two years after the author’s death in 1940. Reflections on Wolfe and on my own Carolina boyhood in Greensboro came sweeping back last autumn as I made an impulsive overnight drive toward Asheville—where I had not set foot in nearly 40 years—to try and wring some solace from the last days of the golf season up in the Ridge.