The Lost Country

A wonder of Southern Gothic storytelling. –Southern Living (Best Southern Books of 2018)
Southern Independent Booksellers Pick, July 2018 Billy Edgewater is a harbinger of doom. Estranged from his family, discharged from the Navy, and touched by a rising desperation, he sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying.
On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D.L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are. Hounded at every turn by scams, vigilantes, grievous loss, and unspeakable violence, Edgewater navigates the long road home, searching for a place that may be nothing but memory.

Hailed as a seemingly effortless storyteller by the New York Times Book Review and a writer of striking talent by the Chicago Tribune, William Gay, with this long-awaited novel, secures his place alongside Faulkner, O'Connor, and McCarthy as one of the greatest novelists in the Southern Gothic tradition.