Search

The stunning debut of a writer hailed by Robert Penn Warren as “that very rare thing, the born novelist”He had lost the thread of his life, and he couldn't pretend any longer that he hadn't. As soon as Thomas Rapidan thinks it, he knows it is true. The question is, what to do about it? John Yount's slim, potent first novel is the story of a troubled young man deciding whether to live or die. Tom's wife, Maggie, knows that he does not love her. She pays his tuition at the North Carolina university they attend together, but he shows no interest in her or in his classes—only in drinking himself into a stupor and reminiscing about his poor West Virginia upbringing and his violent father. When Tom puts Maggie on a plane home to visit her parents, he is free to indulge his darkest, most cynical desires. He gets drunk, picks a fight in a bar, and edges closer and closer to the abyss. But before he can take the final step, Tom meets a remarkable girl in an unlikely place and discovers that she just might be able to give him the one thing no one else can—forgiveness.

The tender, engaging story of a family in pain and a boy whose quest for courage leads him deep into the wilds of Appalachia In 1948 Madeline Tally leaves her philandering husband and returns home to North Carolina, where she and her thirteen-year-old son, James, move into an ugly purple trailer in the cow pasture behind her father's farmhouse. Smart and sensitive, James worries that he is somehow responsible for his parents'separation and feels out of place in the town where he grew up but has not been back to for five years. None of his old friends have time for him anymore, and his only new one is Lester Buck, a poor, peculiar boy who shares James's love of the outdoors. In Pittsburgh, Edward Tally spends his nights drinking with his fellow construction workers in the bar downstairs from his new apartment. He tries to tell himself that he is better off without Madeline and James, that he wants to be his own man again, free of the expectations that he was never able to meet. But there is a burden on his heart that cannot be eased by booze or by Paris Pergola, the seductive, moody blonde he has taken up with. Told from the alternating perspectives of the three Tallys, Thief of Dreams builds to a stunning climax as Edward comes to North Carolina to try to win back his family, and James and Lester get into a vicious fight with a schoolyard bully. With his friend in the hospital and his parents unable to bridge the divide between them, James heads into the frozen forest. What he discovers there will give him enough wisdom and experience to last a lifetime, if he can only make it back to his family alive.

A powerhouse novel about an idealistic young man's return to a rural Southern town simmering with prejudice and anger Separation papers in hand, Beau Jim Early sets out one hot, dry August morning in 1960 from Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for his brother's farm in Cocke County, Georgia. After six years in the army, civilian life is not as easy as it looks. In short order, Beau Jim gets conned by a shoe-shine boy, buys a Studebaker with bad brakes, and spends nearly every cent of the $400 he won in a crap game the night before. But Beau Jim is a man who can roll with the punches, and the drive into his hometown is as exhilarating as he thought it would be. His brother's farm, however, is a different story. Older by fifteen years, Dan Early has given up his apartment and gone into debt to buy a barren piece of land that his wife, Charlene, calls a “wore out patch of misery.” Sheila, their seven-year-old daughter, is unnaturally slow and shy and has been held back in school—a source of great shame. As Beau Jim hustles pool with Claire, a former high school classmate whose secret life is not as safe as he believes it to be, and makes time with Yancey, a voluptuous redhead finally looking to settle down, Dan's frustration and pity for himself mount. When Charlene sparks his rage, he commits an act so shocking and horrific it brings the whole county to its knees. A spellbinding tale of decent people fighting for their lives in a world overrun with poverty and ignorance, The Trapper's Last Shot is vintage John Yount—forceful, finely crafted, and absolutely unforgettable.

“From now on, there are bound to be two classics of the Great Depression—The Grapes of Wrath and Hardcastle.” —Los Angeles Times In 1931 William Music is making his way back home to Virginia when he hops off a freight train in Switch County, Kentucky, to find something to eat. For eleven cents—all the money in his pocket—he buys a soda bottle's worth of moonshine. Farther down the road, he takes two turnips and a handful of string beans from a kitchen garden and beds down for the night in a haystack. It is still dark out when he wakes up to a dog licking his forehead and a man pointing a pistol in his face. Despite the awkward introduction, Music and Regus Bone are soon friends. Bone is a guard at Hardcastle Coal Co., whose owner will do anything to keep his employees from unionizing. For the irresistible wage of three dollars a day, Music—outfitted with an ancient, misfiring revolver and a holster made from a feed sack—hires on as a watchman despite his queasy feelings about the job. His attraction to the young widow of a miner killed by a former guard only deepens his discomfort, and when he and Bone catch a pair of union organizers, they make a decision that will change their lives and Switch County forever. Inspired by real events, Hardcastle is a stirring tribute to the power of friendship and family in a time and place in which the price of integrity is more than a man on his own can bear.

Funny, suspenseful, tender, and wise—the story of a man who took to the woods, and the woman who found him there Soon after his fortieth birthday, Macon “Toots” Henslee left his home, his job, and his marriage to live in a tree house. Lots of people—his wife especially—thought that he had lost his mind, but from his perch atop a Tennessee riverbank, Toots could see plainly the insanity of his old life. He had become a man who said and did the opposite of what he wanted to say and do—what could be crazier than that? Nine years later, Toots is out fishing one morning when he catches sight of a nervous young woman hiding behind a sycamore. Sally Ann Shaw is an aspiring country singer in trouble—the kind of trouble that comes with a briefcase full of stolen drug money and a pair of hired thugs in hot pursuit. A hermit's tree house is the perfect hiding place, but in such close quarters, Toots and Sally Ann have more than gangsters to fear. For a man who gave up everything to start life over again and a woman in desperate need of a hero, love may be the most dangerous game of all. Hailed by the New York Times as “a tale written with zest and read with pleasure,” Toots in Solitude is a novel as eccentric, endearing, and irresistible as its unforgettable main character.