In his third and most powerful work of fiction, the acclaimed author of The Coming of Rain and Bound for the Promised Land—biographer also of Thomas More—immerses us in the rich life of an American town, in the subtle and complex experience of becoming an American, in the good and evil of a time gone by.The place is Bourbonville, Tennessee. The time: the end of the First World War. The protagonist: Paul Alexander—Greek by birth, Belgian by adoption, wounded in the war, nearly to death, and now washed up history, by accident, by odd fate, on the edges of Bourbonville, and soon to become part of its center.This is a town where people have known one another for generations, a town full of talkers, compulsive storytellers—thrilled to have a new listener to whom they can pour out local scandals, triumphs, secrets, especially the ongoing saga of the great schism between Moreland Pinkerton, champion of Progress who has drained a swamp to a...