The Long Home by William Gay

The Long Home

William Gay

A gritty and quite bleak novel set in Tennessee during the 1940s. It's a beautifully written story but there's violence and realistic dialogue, so not one for the faint hearted. It's quite difficult to follow all the threads of the plot, so it's probably best read over as short a period of time as possible.

Extract
He had not been in these woods since he was a child. Time seemed to have stopped here. He half waited for the rattle of trace chains, the ring of the axe, the slow turning wagon wheels against the earth. This used to be an old houseplace, his father had said. The year the tornado came through the storm just picked it up off the foundation rocks and carried it away, no one knew where.
Parallels
  • Light in August by William Faulkner
  • All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
  • Anything by Robert Frost