KEPT (P.S. (Paperback))

ISBN: 0062236652

Author: Scott, James

Condition: New

Dark and mysterious. . . . A novel whose daring is found in its bleakness. . . . The plot unfolds with a weighty languor reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy. . . sparse, elegant. . . haunting. - New York TimesSet in rural New York state at the turn of the twentieth century, superb new talent James Scott makes his literary debut with The Kept-a propulsive novel reminiscent of the works of Michael Ondaatje, Cormac McCarthy, and Bonnie Jo Campbell, in which a mother and her young son embark on a quest to avenge a terrible and violent tragedy that has shattered their secluded family.In the winter of 1897, a trio of killers descends upon an isolated farm in upstate New York. Midwife Elspeth Howell returns home to the carnage: her husband, and four of her children, murdered. Before she can discover her remaining son Caleb, alive and hiding in the kitchen pantry, another shot rings out over the snow-covered valley. Twelve-year-old Caleb must tend to his mother until she recovers enough for them to take to the frozen wilderness in search of the men responsible.A scorching portrait of a merciless world-of guilt and lost innocence, atonement and retribution, resilience and sacrifice, pregnant obsession and primal adolescence-The Kept introduces an old-beyond-his-years protagonist as indelible and heartbreaking as Mattie Ross of True Grit or Jimmy Blevins of All the Pretty Horses, as well as a shape-shifting mother as enigmatic and mysterious as a character drawn by Russell Banks or Marilynne Robinson.