In the Fall - Hardcover
Book by Lent, Jeffrey
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Review:
Midway through Jeffrey Lent's turbulent and lyrical first novel, a wayward son indulges a sobering reflection. "Mostly, people are cruel, given the chance," Jamie Pelham observes, not only assuaging his own disappointments but also affirming the intransigence of deed and memory--and prejudice. In the Fall is freighted with such moments, as a postbellum Yankee family strives to fathom its past in order to clarify its present. What they find, as Lent's tale ambles over three generations, is the danger of probing too deeply.
From the Author:
When 17-year-old Norman Pelham departs his father's Vermont farm to join the Union army, he can little anticipate the incredulity and scorn that his return--accompanied by his former-slave bride--will elicit. The newlyweds make a go of country life, Leah's industry wins the locals' begrudging respect, and the two transact a fidelity that only rarely acknowledges their racial dissimilarities. Leah, however, who fled her native North Carolina after lashing out violently against a lifetime of abuse, believes an inescapable retribution stalks her. And so, beset with guilt and anxious to confront her own past, she briefly leaves Norman and their three children, throwing all five lives into disarray. Her desperation eventually reemerges in her youngest child, the volatile Jamie, who abandons farm life for bootlegging and rash romance. When his own ruthlessness undoes him, it falls to his son, Foster, to uncover the lingering mystery of Leah's life and death, as well as the obstinate racism that has stalked the Pelhams.
Throughout its pages, In the Fall suggests that identity consists of an undeniable duality--that although we can make of ourselves what we will, we can never completely efface what made us. Foster, upon returning to the farm his father had left years before, understands that it is "a world he was not even sure he wanted part of, and yet a part of it belonged to him by the simple fact of his existence." Unlike his grandmother, though, who found only a disillusioning misery in self-discovery, or his father, who simply shirked the quest, Foster is confident of redemption. Despite a few prolonged episodes and an occasionally portentous dialogue, Jeffrey Lent's debut is admirable, a sobering and painstaking chronicle of the persistence of tragedy and the irrefutability of hope. --Ben Guterson
Jeffrey Lent's Favorite Books: Dalva and The Road Home, by Jim Harrison; A Goat's Song, by Dermot Healy; In the Skin of a Lion, by Michael Ondaatje; Postcards, by E. Annie Proulx; The Emigrants, by W. G. Sebald
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- PublisherThorndike Pr
- Publication date2000
- ISBN 10 0786227834
- ISBN 13 9780786227839
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages967
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In the Fall
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Thorndike Press, Farmington Hills, Michigan, U.S.A.
(2000)
ISBN 10: 0786227834
ISBN 13: 9780786227839
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Good. LARGE PRINT Library withdrawal in the reinforced covers. Front cover has a definite lean. Stamped at the page edge, the card pocket has been removed from the last, blank cover page. The book is useful and PRESENTABLE!. Seller Inventory # BrnxNov6VI371
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In the Fall
Published by
Thorndike Press
(2000)
ISBN 10: 0786227834
ISBN 13: 9780786227839
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Good. Seller Inventory # SONG0786227834
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In The Fall
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Atlantic Monthly Press, New York
(2000)
ISBN 10: 0786227834
ISBN 13: 9780786227839
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. 1st Edition. First Edition/First Printing. Hardcover in unclipped dustjacket. 542 pages. The absolutely wonderful saga of a returning soldier. Home to the hills of Vermont with his slave bride, and their children's eventual guilt and tragedy. As new. Unread. From my smoke-free collection. Ships in well-padded box. Seller Inventory # 750
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In The Fall
Published by
Atlantic Monthly Press. New York., New York
(2000)
ISBN 10: 0786227834
ISBN 13: 9780786227839
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First Edition
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. 1st Edition. First Edition/First Printing. Hardcover in unclipped dustjacket. 542 pages.A marvelous book. It stays with you long after you lay it down. Nothing less than an American epic. As new. Unread. From my smoke-free collection. Ships in well-padded box. Seller Inventory # 281
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In The Fall: Special Signed & Numbered Limited Edition in Slipcase
Published by
Atlantic Monthly Press, New York
(2000)
ISBN 10: 0786227834
ISBN 13: 9780786227839
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. 1st Edition. First Edition/First Printing. Hardcover. 542 pages. Jeffrey Lent's highly acclaimed first novel. This is a copy of the Special Limited Issue of In The Fall. One of only 200 copies, of which this is number 37. Signed by the Vermont author on the limitation page. Quarter-bound in cloth silk and leather in a blue cloth covered clamshell box, with label on front reproducing a William Henry Stevens, 1891-1949, untitled pastel mountain range. JL embossed on front board. Campbell - Logan Bindery. Includes laid in extra print of the Stevens painting, and a Captain's Bookshelf book mark. An absolutely lovely copy. As new. Unread. From my smoke-free collection. Ships in well-padded box. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 6879
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