Provinces of night

"The year is 1952, and E. F. Bloodworth has returned to his home - a forgotten corner of Tennessee - after twenty years of roaming. The wife he walked out on has withered and faded, his three sons are grown and angry. Warren is a womanizing alcoholic, Boyd is driven by jealousy to hunt down his wife's lover, and Brady puts hexes on his enemies from his mamma's porch.

Only Fleming, the old man's grandson, treats him with the reverence his age commands, and sees past all the hatred to realize the way it can poison a man's soul. Fleming, a seventeen-year-old dreamer, interprets this seemingly stark world with the uncynical wit and wisdom of the young. When he encounters Raven Lee, a sloe-eyed beauty from a neighboring town, he slowly finds the courage to face this family curse.".

"In a tale redolent with the crumbling loyalties and age-old strife of the South, Gay's characters inhabit a world driven by blood ties that strangle as they bind."--BOOK JACKET.