In the Frightened Heart of Me

Tony Narducci fell in love with Tennessee Williams’s poetry when he was fourteen years old. For Narducci, Williams was the genius who redefined theater in America, most accomplished modern playwright, and perhaps one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. So when thirty-three-year-old Narducci met Williams at a Key West bar in February 1982, the encounter was more than coincidence. It was destiny.
In In the Frightened Heart of Me, Narducci narrates the story of how, after that first meeting, he was drawn deep into Williams’s life and work—a journey that would change Narducci’s life in every way. Companions until Williams’s death in February 1983, this biography shares how their time together was an odyssey of adventure, emotional entanglement, and insight.
While providing a glimpse into the Key West of the early 1980s, In the Frightened Heart of Me blends the events and sorrows of Williams’s last year on earth with Narducci’s life-changing story and the effects of their relationship. It tells how 1983 was the year Narducci evolved from a floundering, young aspiring artist to a focused business entrepreneur. It was the year he watched his literary hero, a titan of literature, become a frightened, dying old man—and the year AIDS took the lives of many of his loved ones. It was the year that defined his life.