About this item

In this magically evocative novel, William Maxwell explores the enigmatic gravity of the past, which compels us to keep explaining it even as it makes liars out of us every time we try. On a winter morning in the 1920s, a shot rings out on a farm in rural Illinois. A man named Lloyd Wilson has been killed. And the tenuous friendship between two lonely teenagersone privileged yet neglected, the other a troubled farm boyhas been shattered.Fifty years later, one of those boysnow a grown mantries to reconstruct the events that led up to the murder. In doing so, he is inevitably drawn back to his lost friend Cletus, who has the misfortune of being the son of Wilsons killer and who in the months before witnessed things that Maxwells narrator can only guess at.



Read Next Recommendation

Report incorrect product information.