Paxton Davis; Novelist Portrayed Depression-Era Boyhood

Paxton Davis, 69, whose trilogy of autobiographical novels depicted boyhood in Depression-era North Carolina. Davis published 10 books and was at work on an 11th, about the 1932 killing of an heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune. His first novel, “Being a Boy,” told of growing up in Buena Vista, a well-to-do Winston-Salem neighborhood. “A Boy’s War” and “A Boy No More” completed the trilogy. Davis also taught journalism at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., from 1953 to 1968 and headed the university’s journalism and communications department from 1968 until his retirement in 1976. In Fincastle, Va., on Saturday of a heart ailment.