In the Fall [Paperback]

Jeffrey Lent (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 2001

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."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Midway through Jeffrey Lent's turbulent and lyrical first novel, a wayward son indulges a sobering reflection. "Mostly, people are cruel, given the chance," Jamie Pelham observes, not only assuaging his own disappointments but also affirming the intransigence of deed and memory--and prejudice. In the Fall is freighted with such moments, as a postbellum Yankee family strives to fathom its past in order to clarify its present. What they find, as Lent's tale ambles over three generations, is the danger of probing too deeply.

When 17-year-old Norman Pelham departs his father's Vermont farm to join the Union army, he can little anticipate the incredulity and scorn that his return--accompanied by his former-slave bride--will elicit. The newlyweds make a go of country life, Leah's industry wins the locals' begrudging respect, and the two transact a fidelity that only rarely acknowledges their racial dissimilarities. Leah, however, who fled her native North Carolina after lashing out violently against a lifetime of abuse, believes an inescapable retribution stalks her. And so, beset with guilt and anxious to confront her own past, she briefly leaves Norman and their three children, throwing all five lives into disarray. Her desperation eventually reemerges in her youngest child, the volatile Jamie, who abandons farm life for bootlegging and rash romance. When his own ruthlessness undoes him, it falls to his son, Foster, to uncover the lingering mystery of Leah's life and death, as well as the obstinate racism that has stalked the Pelhams.

Throughout its pages, In the Fall suggests that identity consists of an undeniable duality--that although we can make of ourselves what we will, we can never completely efface what made us. Foster, upon returning to the farm his father had left years before, understands that it is "a world he was not even sure he wanted part of, and yet a part of it belonged to him by the simple fact of his existence." Unlike his grandmother, though, who found only a disillusioning misery in self-discovery, or his father, who simply shirked the quest, Foster is confident of redemption. Despite a few prolonged episodes and an occasionally portentous dialogue, Jeffrey Lent's debut is admirable, a sobering and painstaking chronicle of the persistence of tragedy and the irrefutability of hope. --Ben Guterson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The immediacy of the past, the tensions of race, the crushing weight of guilt and the searing intensity of forbidden love drive Lent's expansive, richly detailed and expertly plotted debut novel. Spanning three generations, from the end of the Civil War through Prohibition, the story begins with an interracial marriage between a Vermont soldier and a runaway slave girl. Nineteen-year-old Norman Pelham is wounded and dying in the woods of Virginia near the end of the war when 16-year-old Leah finds and saves him. She has fled Sweetboro, N.C., after killing her owner's sonAher own half brotherAwhen he tried to rape her. Norman and Leah know better than to allow their initial attraction to flower into love, but they cannot ignore their passion, and they marry on the road to Vermont. In brisk, confident detail, Lent recreates many historical scenesAsoldiers returning wearily home, cider-pressing time in Vermont, the ins and outs of bootlegging and whiskey-running in the resort mountains of New Hampshire in the '20s. The male charactersANorman, his son and youngest child, Jamie, and Jamie's son, FosterAprovide the narrative thread for the novel; but it is Leah whose story thematically unites the lives of husband, son, and grandson. Twenty-five years after her flight, Leah finds that she cannot continue to put the past behind her and must go back to Sweetboro. What she discovers there, and never reveals to her husband or to either of her grown daughters, is a mystery until her grandson Foster finally makes his own trip south. Lent's prose is sometimes lyrical to a fault, but otherwise remarkable for its grace, felicity and precision. Engrossing, wonderfully written, with a full gallery of believable and sympathetic characters, this first novel introduces an ambitious and talented writer. Agent, Kim Witherspoon. BOMC main selection; QPB selection; paperback rights to Vintage; foreign rights sold in the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Sweden and Greece. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Picador (October 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0330391968
• ISBN-13: 978-0330391962
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (124 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,315,614 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In The Fall, a rarity, April 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: In the Fall (Hardcover)

This is a beautiful, lovely book as heartbreakingly sad as anything I've ever read. There's four or five places in Lent's narrative that just cut you off at the knees emotionally. I'd just have to put the book down a while because I was so affected with the beauty and melancholy of his story. Generational sagas tend to spread a lot of characters too thin over a natural episodic repetitiveness. Lent never allows that to happen here. Each character is presented in their own unique way, their stories sometimes dovetailing, but as time passes back and again, their true natures are ever more revealed, often tragically. I thought them all wonderful. I'd intended to take my time reading "Fall" but around page 180-90 the whole thing, perfectly terrific to that point, picked up an undeniable narrative steam, one of those I-cannot-&-will-not put this bloody thing down till I find out what happens kind of things. What a ride. In the end this is one of those books you love to tell friends about, knowing that if they only like it half as much as you do, they'll love it.

78 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Is What 5 Stars Are For!, April 18, 2000

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: In the Fall (Hardcover)

Well before I finished this book, I was thinking about the reviews I had previously written. I tried to recall those that I thought merited 5 stars. By the time I finished, "In The Fall", I decided a five star rating is something that should be rather scarce.

Book Jackets generally suffer from severe cases of superlative laced hyperbole. If all endorsements were accurate you could walk blindfolded into your favorite purveyor of books, lay your hand on the first tome to be touched, and a Pulitzer, Booker, Nobel, or a Whitbread would be in you hand! However, it is far more likely you would dredge up a tell-all book on Harry Potter's Carbohydrate Addiction with a free coupon good toward any exploitive bestseller, think Boulder Colorado, there are two on the bestseller list as I write.

But in this scenario the odds are beaten, no 250-page novel/screenplay, rather a 542-page piece of magic that booklovers live for. "In The Fall" is with you whether you are reading, or away from it. Mr. Lent creates characters so vivid, a story that reveals itself without affectation, pretense, or literary sleight of hand, that this book crosses that point in the reader's mind from a book, to an experience that not only immerses you while being read, but crosses from just a piece of fiction you read, to a set of acquaintances that stay with you. The "fictional" conversations and events, the characters so vividly rendered, you know not only would you recognize them on the street, but wouldn't be surprised if you did. This is a story you think about as happening, rather than just a book. The degree to which you enter this world is a rare event, a special experience.

The Writer I thought of when enjoying this work was John Steinbeck. The same way "The Grapes Of Wrath" stays with you years after it was read, or "East Of Eden" or "Cannery Row" lingers, this does the same. This is a story you will remember in detail, these are characters names you will always recall, this caliber of book is why I read. "In The Fall" is the first book I have read in years that I believe will be a true classic in time. "Instant Classic" is a moronic contradiction in terms. A classic has to age, to endure, to continue to be relevant, this work has all the necessary credentials, and in abundance.

This is Mr. Lent's first book, but it will stand side by side with Writers who have worked their craft for careers. I say this not to denigrate anyone's work, rather to express what an achievement this book is. For those who create the short lists for literary honors this one should be a foregone conclusion. And as for being an award winner, I think that conclusion is as safe a bet as one can make.

An incredible book whether the first, tenth, or last. Mr. Lent stay healthy and write!

45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rich and elegant, April 17, 2000

By 

Candace "thepageturner" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Fall (Hardcover)

"In the Fall" is a first novel written by someone who was born to write. The story has such depth and the characters so fully drawn that reading the book is a pleasure that rewards.

Set in Vermont between the Civil War and the Depression, "In the Fall" begins with Norman Pelham returning from the Civil War with his new wife, Leah, a former slave, whom he met when he was wounded and Leah was on the run from the plantation. It would seem that Leah has escaped the South and the legacy of slavery in her New England home, but that is far from the truth. The past ricochets through the following generations, leaving a young grandson to look for the truth.

The Pelhams, with their strong, unconventional relationships, stubborness, and fits of violence, are an interesting bunch. "In the Fall" is an unusual and compelling debut.