A Slant of Light
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
For fans of The Orchardist and The Cove and from the author of bestselling In the Fall, an epic historical novel that fearlessly addresses the largest questions of love, justice, and how to live.
"Wonderfully entertaining, deeply moving, beautifully written . . . In my estimation, Jeffrey Lent is our most American writer since Mark Twain and one of the two of three best novelists of our time."--Howard Frank Mosher
At the close of the Civil War, weary veteran Malcolm Hopeton returns to his home in western New York State to find his wife and hired man missing and his farm in disrepair. A double murder ensues, the repercussions of which ripple through a community with spiritual roots in the Second Great Awakening. Hopeton has gone from the horrors of war to those far worse, and arrayed around him are a host of other people struggling to make sense of his crime. Among them is Enoch Stone, the lawyer for the community, whose spiritual dedication is subverted by his lust for power; August Swartout, whose wife has left earthly time and whose eye is set on eternity; and a boy who must straddle two worlds as he finds his own truth and strength. Always there is love and the memory of love--as haunting as the American Eden that Jeffrey Lent has so exquisitely rendered in this unforgettable novel.
A Slant of Light is a novel of earthly pleasure and deep love, of loss and war, of prophets and followers, of theft and revenge, in an American moment where a seemingly golden age has been shattered. This is Jeffrey Lent on his home ground and at the height of his powers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A double murder stirs old loyalties and resentments in Lent's (In the Fall) atmospheric novel. Malcolm Hopeton, a soldier newly returned from the Civil War, finds himself betrayed by both his wife, Bethany, and Amos Wheeler, the hired man entrusted with his farm. Hopeton's explosive rage leads him to kill them both, provoking a variety of responses within his western New York community: some incensed, others sympathetic. Harlan Davis, Hopeton's teenage farmhand and the sole witness to the crime, desperately gathers information for the defense. A portrait of a community disoriented by war and grappling for meaning in Christian spiritualism, the novel conveys Malcolm's struggles as a detailed miniature of the postwar American consciousness his disaffection and self-examination, combined with a sense of betrayal from those he trusted most. Lent's vivid description of the rural landscape calls to mind a Wyeth painting, and a surprising sensuality enlivens the characters' interactions with the world and one another. The novel is slow going at times, and the characters' seeming lack of memories of the war is puzzling; even Hopeton, clearly scarred by his experience, refers to it only in passing. Yet piece by subtle piece, the story deftly casts its spell.
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