First published in 1973, Some Sweet Day is the story of the Turnbolt family in 1944, as told by six year old Gatewood Turnbolt, the eldest son. His relationship with his father, Will Turnbolt, a volatile, sometimes violent man, is a combination of wariness and love.

"It is an evocative, painful and lovely book that captures the immediacy and bewilderment of a child facing harsh imponderables for the first time."—Publishers Weekly

"Without wasting a well-chosen word, Mr. Woolley fills in family ties, relationships with neighbors, the tone of the country. He suggests a raison d' être for Will's bitterness if not for his brutality. And he gets it all together in a commanding novel of childhood that surges with life." --New York Times Book Review