Light in August

Light in August, set in Faulkner’s oft used Yoknapatawpha County, follows three separate yet connected storylines that focuses on race and violence in the deep South. The novel opens with a pregnant Lena Grove traveling the South on foot to find her baby’s father, a man she knows by the name of Lucas Burch but is actually named Joe Brown. Lena’s search leads her to a man named Byron Bunch, who everyone thinks she must mean, and Byron quickly becomes obsessed with Lena, wishes to marry her, and subsequently keeps her from the baby’s father. The second storyline focuses on Joe Christmas, a troubled man who is uncertain about his birth and believes himself to be half-black. He works at a local lumber mill but only in an attempt to disguise his illegal liquor business where he makes most of his money. He becomes partners with a man named Joe Brown. The third and final story to tie everything together is Gail Hightower, a local ex-minister after he became involved in scandal that forever tarnished his name.


The novel is richly written, exquisitely descriptive and oftentimes complex as it alternates being multiple individuals and also between their pasts and their present. Each separate story continues on its own path yet they are all skilfully and slowly intertwining leaving the reader oblivious to the obvious connections until the pieces finally come together at the end.


“It is just dawn, daylight: that gray and lonely suspension filled with the peaceful and tentative waking of birds. The air, inbreathed, is like spring water. He breathes deep and slow, feeling with each breath himself diffuse in the neutral grayness, becoming one with loneliness and quiet that has never known fury or despair.”