New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2013
In Local Souls, Allan Gurganus offers us three linked novellas, set in legendary Falls, North Carolina—site of his beloved Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. We find the small town revolutionized by freer sexuality, loosened family ties, and secular worship. Gurganus celebrates those citizens who stayed home but uncovers certain old habits—adultery, incest, obsession—very much alive in this “Winesburg, Ohio” with high-speed Internet. Writing about erotic hunger and social embarrassment with Twain’s knife-edged glee, Gurganus dramatizes the passing of Hawthorne’s small-town America.
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“This remarkable novel deserves to be read more than once. The High Divide proves Enger’s chops as a masterful storyteller.” —Ann Weisgarber, author of The Promise
“The High Divide, a novel about a family in peril, is haunting and tense but leavened by considerable warmth and humanity. Lin Enger writes with durable grace about a man’s quest for redemption and the human capacity for forgiveness.” —Benjamin Percy, author of Red Moon
In 1886, Gretta Pope wakes one morning to discover that her husband is gone.
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The epic tale of an endangered Newfoundland community and the struggles of one man determined to resist its extinction.
The scarcely populated town of Sweetland rests on the shore of a remote Canadian island. Its slow decline finally reaches a head when the mainland government offers each islander a generous resettlement package—the sole stipulation being that everyone must leave. Fierce and enigmatic Moses Sweetland, whose ancestors founded the village, is the only one to refuse. As he watches his neighbors abandon the island, he recalls the town’s rugged history and its eccentric cast of characters. Evoking The Shipping News,
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Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch—“Scout”—returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise’s homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town, and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt.
Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past—a journey that can only be guided by one’s own conscience.
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