Provinces of night

Description

It's 1952, and E.F. Bloodworth is finally coming home to Ackerman's Field, Tennessee. Itinerant banjo picker and volatile vagrant, he's been gone ever since he gunned down a deputy thirty years before. Two of his sons won't be home to greet him: Warren lives a life of alcoholic philandering down in Alabama, and Boyd has gone to Detroit in vengeful pursuit of his wife and the peddler she ran off with. His third son, Brady, is still home, but he's an addled soothsayer given to voodoo and bent on doing whatever it takes to keep E.F. from seeing the wife he abandoned. Only Fleming, E.F.'s grandson, is pleased with the old man's homecoming, but Fleming's life is soon to careen down an unpredictable path hewn by the beautiful Raven Lee Halfacre.In the great Southern tradition of Faulkner, Styron, and Cormac McCarthy, William Gay wields a prose as evocative and lush as the haunted and humid world it depicts. Provinces of Night is a tale redolent of violence and redemption--a whiskey-scented, knife-scarred novel whose indelible finale is not an ending nearly so much as it is an apotheosis. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Description

"The year is 1952, and E. F. Bloodworth has returned to his home - a forgotten corner of Tennessee - after twenty years of roaming. The wife he walked out on has withered and faded, his three sons are grown and angry. Warren is a womanizing alcoholic, Boyd is driven by jealousy to hunt down his wife's lover, and Brady puts hexes on his enemies from his mamma's porch. Only Fleming, the old man's grandson, treats him with the reverence his age commands, and sees past all the hatred to realize the way it can poison a man's soul. Fleming, a seventeen-year-old dreamer, interprets this seemingly stark world with the uncynical wit and wisdom of the young. When he encounters Raven Lee, a sloe-eyed beauty from a neighboring town, he slowly finds the courage to face this family curse.". "In a tale redolent with the crumbling loyalties and age-old strife of the South, Gay's characters inhabit a world driven by blood ties that strangle as they bind."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

Genres

• Fiction.

Other Editions

• Provinces of nightDoubleday2000-01-01
• Provinces of Night (Nova Audio Books)Audio CassetteNova Audio Books2000-12-26
• Provinces of NightAnchor2002-04-09
• Provinces of NightFaber & Faber, Limited2005-01-01
• Provinces of NightAudio CDBrilliance Audio on MP3-CD Lib Ed2005-03-25
• Provinces of NightAudio CDBrilliance Audio on MP3-CD2005-03-25