In the Fall

In the Fall is that rare thing: a truly moving and brilliantly written American family epic. In prose that ranges from earthy to lyrical, Jeffrey Lent conjures the history of three generations born of passion and haunted by the past.

AT THE CLOSE OF THE CIVIL WAR, Norman Pelham, son of a Vermont farmer, is found wounded in the woods by Leah, an escaped slave. The two become lovers as Leah nurses Norman back to health, and journey north together as man and wife. But Leah harbors a secret that will rend what the lovers have wrought. Her son, Jamie, escapes rural Vermont and, passing for white, enters the outwardly glamorous world of northern resorts. But he can no more escape the past than could his mother. It is his son, Foster, who discovers what led Leah from a decrepit southern plantation to a bucolic Vermont homestead and back, on a path littered with the sorrows of slavery and obstructed by the unanswered challenges of race.