Books with author Jeffrey Lent

This “richly detailed and expertly plotted” historical epic chronicles the dark secrets and forbidden loves of an American family across three generations (Publishers Weekly, starred review). In the twilight of the Civil War, a Union soldier meets a runaway slave and returns with her to his family homestead in Vermont, launching the story of a bold, interracial union and its myriad consequences. This passionate couple and their descendants will grapple with the ongoing devastations of the war, racism, and a haunting family legacy that lies dormant until a grandson is driven to discover the secret of his ancestors. Spanning the post–Civil War era to the edge of the Great Depression, In the Fall is an expansive saga of a rapidly evolving America—from life on a farm, through the final years of Prohibition and bootlegging in the resort towns of New Hampshire, to the advent of modern times. “Remarkable for its grace, felicity and precision,” Jeffrey Lent’s debut novel is an utterly compelling vision of America, and an unforgettable portrait of an American family (Publishers Weekly, starred review). “Jeffrey Lent has quietly created some of the finest novels of our new century.” —Ron Rash “Jeffrey Lent builds characters and their world like a painter layering his canvas, telling his story but substantiating it with color and light.” —Tim Pears “Sentence by sentence . . . Lent’s language draws you in like a clear stream in summer.” —Tim Gautreaux

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 MosherAt 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.

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 Swarthout, 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.

“A brilliantly conceived page-turner.”—Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and Command and Control “I couldn’t put the book down, reading most of it in the course of one increasingly intense evening. If fear of nuclear war is going to keep you up at night, at least it can be a page-turner.”—New ScientistAmerica lost 1.4 million citizens in the North Korean attacks of March 2020. This is the final, authorized report of the government commission charged with investigating the calamity. “The skies over the Korean Peninsula on March 21, 2020, were clear and blue.” So begins this sobering report on the findings of the Commission on the Nuclear Attacks against the United States, established by law by Congress and President Donald J. Trump to investigate the horrific events of the next three days. An independent, bipartisan panel led by nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis, the commission was charged with finding and reporting the relevant facts, investigating how the nuclear war began, and determining whether our government was adequately prepared for combating a nuclear adversary and safeguarding U.S. citizens. Did President Trump and his advisers understand North Korean views about nuclear weapons? Did they appreciate the dangers of provoking the country’s ruler with social media posts and military exercises? Did the tragic milestones of that fateful month—North Korea's accidental shoot-down of Air Busan flight 411, the retaliatory strike by South Korea, and the tweet that triggered vastly more carnage—inevitably lead to war? Or did America’s leaders have the opportunity to avert the greatest calamity in the history of our nation? Answering these questions will not bring back the lives lost in March 2020. It will not rebuild New York, Washington, or the other cities reduced to rubble. But at the very least, it might prevent a tragedy of this magnitude from occurring again. It is this hope, more than any other, that inspired The 2020 Commission Report.

“Majestic . . . epic . . . vital . . . a necessary piece in a uniquely American mosaic.”—The New York Times Book Review“Right from the start of this engrossing family saga, you know that you’re in the hands of a storyteller who knows just where he’s going. . . . You can hear echoes of Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy in Lent’s prose. But the presiding geniuses of this dark novel’s painterly, poetic scenes are Robert Frost and the artist Winslow Homer . . . flint-eyed Yankees who never saw a paradise that didn’t have a snake.”—NewsweekA national bestseller and a New York Times notable book, now in Grove Press paperback for the first time, In the Fall is a richly layered epic that conjures the history of three generations of an American family and the dark secrets that blister at its core. At the close of the Civil War, Norman Pelham, son of a Vermont farmer, is found wounded by Leah, an escaped slave harboring a devastating secret. The two become lovers as Leah nurses Norman back to health, and journey north together as man and wife. Their son forsakes the family for the anonymous world of bootlegging and nightclubs, but long-buried truths come to light when their grandson is driven to retrace his history and disentangle his complicated inheritance. Spanning the post-Civil War era to the edge of the Great Depression, In the Fall is a fierce, gripping vision of an American landscape and history, and an unforgettable portrait of an American family. “A stunning success . . . Builds like a thunderstorm coming over the horizon.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“A brilliantly conceived page-turner.”—Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and Command and Control “I couldn’t put the book down, reading most of it in the course of one increasingly intense evening. If fear of nuclear war is going to keep you up at night, at least it can be a page-turner.”—New ScientistAmerica lost 1.4 million citizens in the North Korean attacks of March 2020. This is the final, authorized report of the government commission charged with investigating the calamity. “The skies over the Korean Peninsula on March 21, 2020, were clear and blue.” So begins this sobering report on the findings of the Commission on the Nuclear Attacks against the United States, established by law by Congress and President Donald J. Trump to investigate the horrific events of the next three days. An independent, bipartisan panel led by nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis, the commission was charged with finding and reporting the relevant facts, investigating how the nuclear war began, and determining whether our government was adequately prepared for combating a nuclear adversary and safeguarding U.S. citizens. Did President Trump and his advisers understand North Korean views about nuclear weapons? Did they appreciate the dangers of provoking the country’s ruler with social media posts and military exercises? Did the tragic milestones of that fateful month—North Korea's accidental shoot-down of Air Busan flight 411, the retaliatory strike by South Korea, and the tweet that triggered vastly more carnage—inevitably lead to war? Or did America’s leaders have the opportunity to avert the greatest calamity in the history of our nation? Answering these questions will not bring back the lives lost in March 2020. It will not rebuild New York, Washington, or the other cities reduced to rubble. But at the very least, it might prevent a tragedy of this magnitude from occurring again. It is this hope, more than any other, that inspired The 2020 Commission Report.

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.

Compared by critics to William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, Jeffrey Lent’s In the Fall is the most stunning debut to come along in years. Ambitious in scope and passionately executed, this epic novel is the rarest of things: a truly moving, emotionally honest, and intellectually satisfying American family.In the twilight of the Civil War, Leah, an escaped slave, discovers Norman Pelham, a wounded soldier who lies dying in a battlefield outside Richmond. After she nurses him back to health, Norman brings her to his family farm in Vermont as his wife, and they begin a family. Now the mother of three, and however begrudgingly, accepted in the community, Leah travels back to the South of her birth and returns with a secret that threatens to destroy what she and Norman had created. Her son Jamie, passing for white, escapes his legacy and enters a world of petty bootlegging, achieving a kind of respectability in the Prohibition era, but also suffering wrenching losses. At the eve of the Great Depression his son, Foster, retraces the path taken by his grandmother and finally confronts the secret exposed by an unknown white uncle, the legacy of slavery, and the painful intricacies of race.

Spanning the post-Civil War era to the edge of the Great Depression, In the Fall is an extraordinary epic of three generations of an American family, the dark secrets that blister at its core, and the transcendent bonds between men and women that fuel their lives over the course of six decades.In the twilight of the Civil War, a Union soldier named Norman Pelham is found battle-wounded and near death by Leah, a slave running from a different hell. After Leah nurses him back to health, Norman brings her to his family homestead in Vermont as his wife, and there they begin a family that will be shaped by their passionate devotion to each other and its consequences.`Placing Lent alongside respected contemporaries such as Charles Frazier and David Guterson, In the Fall is an ambitious, dramatic and sweeping book filled with humanity and crafted thought, even as it touches on the most disturbing and desperate of themes` The Times