Jeffrey Lent

At the close of the Civil War, veteran Malcolm Hopeton, returning home to western New York State, commits a horrific crime that leaves the people around him struggling to make sense of his actions, including a judge who bows to the wisdom of a more human truth within the vision of a nation on the cusp of the modern era.

A Slant of Light

This is the tale of three generations of an American family, the dark secrets at its core, and the forbidden transcendent love affairs that fuel the characters over the course of six decades, from the Civil War to the edge of the depression.

In the Fall

Compared by critics to William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, Jeffrey Lent’s In the Fall is the most stunning debut to come along in years. Ambitious in scope and passionately executed, this epic novel is the rarest of things: a truly moving, emotionally honest, and intellectually satisfying American family. In the twilight of the Civil War, Leah, an escaped slave, discovers Norman Pelham, a wounded soldier who lies dying in a battlefield outside Richmond. After she nurses him back to health, Norman brings her to his family farm in Vermont as his wife, and they begin a family. Now the mother of three, and however begrudgingly, accepted in the community, Leah travels back to the South of her birth and returns with a secret that threatens to destroy what she and Norman had created. Her son Jamie, passing for white, escapes his legacy and enters a world of petty bootlegging, achieving a kind of respectability in the Prohibition era, but also suffering wrenching losses. At the eve of the Great Depression his son, Foster, retraces the path taken by his grandmother and finally confronts the secret exposed by an unknown white uncle, the legacy of slavery, and the painful intricacies of race.

Seeking to make a fresh start and establish himself as a trader, Blood heads for Indian Stream, a wild, ungoverned territory in northern New Hampshire, but his arrival triggers an escalating series of clashes and violence.

Lost Nation

Katey Snow slips the pickup into neutral and rolls silently out of the driveway of her Vermont home; her parents, Oliver and Ruth, still asleep. She isn't so much running away as on a journey of discovery, carrying a packet of letters addressed to her mother from an old army buddy of her father's. She has only recently been told that Oliver, who she adores more than anyone, isn't her biological father. Through Ruth's recollections, we learn of her courtship with Oliver, their marriage on the eve of war, and his return as a changed man.

Before We Sleep

A bold and epic novel chronicling the dark secrets and forbidden, transcendent loves of an American family across three generations. In the twilight of the Civil War, a Union soldier meets a runaway slave and returns with her to his family homestead in Vermont, launching the story of a bold, interracial union and its consequences. This passionate couple and their descendents will grapple with the ongoing devastations of the war, racism, and a haunting family legacy that lie dormant until a grandson is driven to discover the secret of his ancestors. Spanning the post–Civil War era to the edge of the Great Depression, In the Fall is an incredible rendering of a rapidly evolving America—from life on a farm, through the final years of Prohibition and bootlegging in the resort towns of New Hampshire, to the advent of modern times. “Expansive, richly detailed and expertly plotted” (Publishers Weekly), Jeffrey Lent’s debut novel is a fierce and utterly compelling vision of an American landscape and history, and an unforgettable portrait of an American family. “Jeffrey Lent has quietly created some of the finest novels of our new century.” —Ron Rash “Jeffrey Lent builds characters and their world like a painter layering his canvas, telling his story but substantiating it with color and light.” —Tim Pears “Sentence by sentence . . . Lent’s language draws you in like a clear stream in summer.” —Tim Gautreaux

The acclaimed author’s “transcendent story about the healing power of love and art” set in the New England woods—“magisterial and . . . beautifully written” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Hewitt Pearce lives alone in his Vermont family home, producing custom ironwork and safeguarding a small collection of art his late father left behind. When Jessica, a troubled young vagabond, washes up in his backwoods one morning, Hewitt’s hermetic existence is challenged. As he gradually uncovers Jessica’s secrets and reestablishes contact with Emily, a woman he thought he had lost twenty years before, Hewitt must confront his own dark history and rediscover how much he craves human connection. Rendered in prose that is “lustrous—rich in supple dialogue and finely patterned imagery,” A Peculiar Grace is a remarkable achievement by one of our finest authors, an insightful portrait of family secrets, and a rich tapestry filled with characters who have learned to survive by giving shape to their losses (Booklist). “Echoing the rhapsodic specificity and gravitas of Steinbeck and Kent Haruf, Lent has constructed a resolute tale of paradise lost and found.” —Booklist, starred review “Jeffrey Lent has quietly created some of the finest novels of our new century.” —Ron Rash “Jeffrey Lent builds characters and their world like a painter layering his canvas, telling his story but substantiating it with color and light.” —Tim Pears “Sentence by sentence rural New England comes alive, and Lent’s language draws you in like a clear stream in summer.” —Tim Gautreaux

A Novel

A Peculiar Grace

After You’ve Gone in paperback, it is a moving, sublime love story set in the cataclysmic decades around the turn of the twentieth century. Henry Dorn has spent years building a family, but it only takes a single afternoon for it to fall apart. Abruptly widowed of the love of his life, Henry buys a steamer ticket for Amsterdam, the city of his heritage, hoping to start life anew. But nothing could have prepared him for the woman he meets on the ship: the fiery, self-sufficient Lydia Pearce, one of a new generation of women. Before long the two have fallen into an affair of a depth and significance for which neither was prepared. But the memory of his wife and the vexed relationship he had with their son haunt Henry in the midst of his new beginning. Jeffrey Lent is one of our finest novelists, and After You’ve Gone delivers a tale that beautifully charts the sweep of a life, the grim reach of a war, and the discovery—and loss—of life-defining love

After You've Gone

Lost Nation delves beneath the bright, promising veneer of early-nineteenth-century New England to unveil a startling parable of individualism and nationhood. The novel opens with a man known as Blood, guiding an oxcart of rum toward the wild country of New Hampshire, an ungoverned territory called the Indian Stream — a land where the luckless or outlawed have made a fresh start. Blood is a man of contradictions, of learning and wisdom, but also a man with a secret past that has scorched his soul. He sets forth to establish himself as a trader, hauling with him Sally, a sixteen-year-old girl won from the madam of a brothel over a game of cards. Their arrival in the Indian Stream triggers an escalating series of clashes that serves to sever the master/servant bond between them, and offers both a second chance with life. But as the conflicts within the community spill over and attract the attention of outside authorities, Blood becomes a target to those seeking easy blame for their troubles. As plots unravel and violence escalates, two young men of uncertain identity appear, and Blood is forced to confront dreaded apparitions of his past, while Sally is offered a final escape.

Jeffrey Lent

About

Books

Join the club