Then Came the Evening
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
An unflinching and beautiful debut about belonging and betrayal, family and forgiveness
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'Told with a stark narrative voice that reflects the harsh unforgiving subject, the comparisons to Cormac McCarthy are already coming thick and fast' - GQ
'A startling evocation of a wild place in which every man and woman struggle on in their own private Idaho' - Daily Telegraph
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Bandy Dorner, home from Vietnam, awakes with his car mired in a canal, his cabin reduced to ashes, and his pregnant wife preparing to leave town with her lover. Within moments, a cop lies bleeding on the road.
Eighteen years later, Bandy is released from prison. His parents are gone, but on the derelict family ranch, Bandy faces a different reunion. Tracy, his now teenaged son, has come to claim the father he's never known. Hot on his heels is his mum and Bandy's ex-wife. All three are damaged, hardened, haunted. But warily, desperately, they move in a slow dance around each other, trying to piece back together a family that never was; trying to discover if they belong together at all.
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'An edgy and affecting debut from a writer already bursting with promise and achievement.' - Jim Crace
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hart's accomplished debut follows Vietnam vet Bandy Dorner, who wakes up from a drunken bender to discover the cabin he shared with his pregnant wife, Iona, has burned to the ground and she is believed to have died in the fire. After Bandy gets in a scuffle with two policemen that ends with one cop dead and Bandy shot through the shoulder, he learns that Iona has, in fact, left with her lover. Fast forward to 1990, when Bandy's 18-year-old son, Tracy, visits his incarcerated father for the first time and soon moves into Bandy's dead parents' home, intent on fixing it up. After Iona joins Tracy, and Bandy gets released from prison, a brilliant depiction of family follows, though there's a great deal of turbulence before things even hint at coming together. The rugged Idaho backdrop adds sometimes stark, sometimes beautiful counterpoints to the stripped-to-the-bone narrative. Most impressive is Hart's ability to conjure rich and conflicted characters in an uncommon situation; his handling of the material is sublime.
