Sometimes a Great Notion

Set along the rain-soaked banks of an Oregon river, Ken Kesey's ambitious second novel is a sprawling epic of an iconoclastic logging family locked in battle against nature, their community, and each other. The Stamper clan—led by the indomitable patriarch Henry and his fiercely independent son Hank—refuses to join a local logging strike, earning the enmity of their entire town while struggling to fulfill a nearly impossible lumber contract. When Hank's troubled half-brother Lee returns home from the East Coast, his arrival sets in motion a devastating collision of wills, desires, and long-buried resentments that will tear the family apart. Kesey's innovative narrative technique weaves multiple voices and perspectives into a symphonic meditation on American individualism, the bonds of family, the weight of the past, and the eternal human struggle against forces beyond our control. Written with the same daring and originality that made One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a classic, Sometimes a Great Notion stands as one of the most ambitious and accomplished American novels of the twentieth century—a profound exploration of what it means to never give an inch.