After the publication of his first novel, Call It Sleep, at the tender age of 28 in 1934, Henry Roth fell into a writer's block that lasted more than 40 years. He began writing again in the 1970s and Mercy of a Rude Stream, intended to be a six-volume series, is the result. A chronicle of the life of Ira Stigman, the first two volumes, A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park and A Diving Rock on the Hudson, were published in 1994 and 1995. Roth died in October of 1995, and the posthumously published From Bondage is the third in the series. Though the novel is full of observations and events from Roth's life, he was adamant before his death that this third volume was not autobiographical.