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Provinces of Night:

A Novel (Google eBook)
Front Cover
64 Reviews
Random House Digital, Inc., Sep 9, 2009 - Fiction - 245 pages
It’s 1952, and E.F. Bloodworth is finally coming home to Ackerman’s Field, Tennessee. Itinerant banjo picker and volatile vagrant, he’s been gone ever since he gunned down a deputy thirty years before. Two of his sons won’t be home to greet him: Warren lives a life of alcoholic philandering down in Alabama, and Boyd has gone to Detroit in vengeful pursuit of his wife and the peddler she ran off with. His third son, Brady, is still home, but he’s an addled soothsayer given to voodoo and bent on doing whatever it takes to keep E.F. from seeing the wife he abandoned. Only Fleming, E.F.’s grandson, is pleased with the old man’s homecoming, but Fleming’s life is soon to careen down an unpredictable path hewn by the beautiful Raven Lee Halfacre.

In the great Southern tradition of Faulkner, Styron, and Cormac McCarthy, William Gay wields a prose as evocative and lush as the haunted and humid world it depicts. Provinces of Night is a tale redolent of violence and redemption–a whiskey-scented, knife-scarred novel whose indelible finale is not an ending nearly so much as it is an apotheosis.



From the Trade Paperback edition.
  

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William Gay is the best southern writer of our time. - Goodreads
It's prose you can see, feel, taste, and smell. - Goodreads
William Gay's writing is absolutely incredible. - Goodreads
His prose has an eerie quality to it. - Goodreads
The writing is so poetic and beautiful at times too. - Goodreads

Review: Provinces of Night

User Review  - Ken Biggs - Goodreads

William Gay's writing is absolutely incredible. It's prose you can see, feel, taste, and smell. Wow, just fantastic. This is the first book I read by Gay. The prior book was "The Long Home", and was the book that elicited recognition of his amazing writing ability. Read full review

Review: Provinces of Night

User Review  - Kevin Young - Goodreads

It's already a couple of months since I read this. Problem is, I'm so in awe of the quality of William Gay's writing, that I don't think I will ever be able to post a fitting review of this novel ... Read full review

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About the author (2009)

William Gay’s fiction has appeared in Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly and other magazines. He has won the William Peden Award and the James Michener Memorial Prize. He lives in Hohenwald, Tennessee.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

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