The Lost Country
Praise for William Gay
Little Sister Death
“Chilling, beautiful, quietly shocking…a study of the writer: his temperament, his torment, and his devil’s pact for the price of a good story.”
—The Independent
“Little Sister Death is not a glib meta-commentary on horror…but a personal glimpse at Gay’s own life, at the way a dedicated artist does not exorcise his demons — but seeks them out, and invites them in.”
—Electric Lit
“Gay’s signature muscular prose, authentic dialogue, and vivid setting combine to make this posthumous novel a worthwhile read.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Cannily crafted, exceptional in its storytelling and doubly seductive in its sultry Southern setting…Little Sister Death is literary horror of the highest order.”
—Tor.com
“Gay takes the familiar trope of the haunted house and imbues it with a slow-burning melancholy and a sense of the inescapability of fate.”
—Big Issue
“If you mix Stephen King with William Faulkner, the result would be the posthumous novel Little Sister Death by William Gay…a great read for a quiet night at home, in an empty house, with the lights off except for a lone reading lamp.”
—The Knoxville News Sentinel
The Long Home
“Gay has created a novel of great emotional power.”
—Denver Post
“It’ll leave you breathless…”
—Rocky Mountain News
Provinces of Night
“Earthily idiosyncratic, spookily Gothic…an author with a powerful vision.”
—The New York Times
“An extremely seductive read.”
—Washington Post Book World
“Southern writing at its very finest, soaked through with the words and images of rural Tennessee, packed full of that which really matters, the problems of the human heart.”
—Booklist
“A writer of striking talent.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Almost a personal revival of handwork in fiction—superb—must be listened to and felt.”
—Barry Hannah, award-winning author of
Geronimo Rex and Airships
“This is a novel from the old school. The characters are truly characters. The prose is Gothic. And the charm is big.”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“Writers like Flannery O’Connor or William Faulkner would welcome Gay as their peer for getting characters so entangled in the roots of a family tree.”
—Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
“[A novel] about the preciousness of hope, the fragility of dreams, interwoven with a good-sized dollop of Biblical justice and the belief that a Southern family can be cursed.”
—The Miami Herald
“Plumbs the larger things in life.… The epic and the personal unite seamlessly.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“An old-fashioned barrel-aged shot of Tennessee storytelling. Gay’s tale of ancient wrongs and men with guns is high-proof stuff.”
—Elwood Reid, author of Midnight Sun and What Salmon Know
“A finely wrought, moving story with a plot as old as Homer. Sometimes the old ones are the best ones.”
—The Atlanta Journal Constitution
“William Gay is the big new name to include in the storied annals of Southern lit.”
—Esquire
“A plot so gripping that the reader wants to fly through the pages to reach the conclusion…but the beauty and richness of Gay’s language exerts a contrary pull, making the reader want to linger over every word.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“Gay is a terrific writer.”
—The Plain Dealer
Twilight
“Think No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy and Deliverance by James Dickey…then double the impact.”
—Stephen King
“There is much to admire here: breathtaking, evocative writing and a dark, sardonic humor.”
—USA Today
“William Gay brings the daring of Flannery O’Connor and William Gaddis to his lush and violent surrealist yarns.”
—The Irish Times
“This is Southern Gothic of the very darkest hue, dripping with atmosphere, sparkling with loquacity, and with occasional gleams of horrible humor. To be read in the broadest daylight.”
—The Times
I Hate to See that Evening Sun Go Down
“William Gay is richly gifted: a seemingly effortless storyteller…a writer of prose that’s fiercely wrought, pungent in detail yet poetic in the most welcome sense.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“One perfect tale follows another, leaving you in little doubt that Gay is a genuine poet of the ornery, the estranged, the disenfranchised, crafting stories built to last.”
—Seattle Times
““Gay confirms his place in the Southern fiction pantheon.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Every story is a masterpiece…in the Southern tradition of Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, and William Faulkner.”
—USA Today
“As charming as it is wise. Hellfire—in all the right ways.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“[Gay] brings to these stories the same astounding talent that earned his two novels…a devoted following.”
—Booklist
“Supple and beautifully told tales…saturated with an intense sense of place, their vividness and authenticity are impossible to fake.”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“Gay writes about old folks marvelously.…[His] words ring like crystal.”
—Washington Post Book World
“As always, Gay’s description and dialogue are amazing.… Writing like this keeps you reading.”
—Orlando Sentinel
“Even Faulkner would have been proud to call these words his own.”
—The Atlanta Journal Constitution
The Lost
Country
William Gay
5220 Dexter Ann Arbor Rd.
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
www.dzancbooks.org
THE LOST COUNTRY. Copyright © 2018, text by William Gay
All rights reserved, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Dzanc Books, 5220 Dexter Ann Arbor Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48103.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gay, William, author.
Title: The lost country / by William Gay.
Description: First edition. | [Ann Arbor, MI] : Dzanc Books, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017059574 | ISBN 9781945814525| eISBN 9781945814693
Classification: LCC PS3557.A985 L67 2017 | DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017059574
First US Edition: July 2018
Jacket design by Steven Seighman
Interior design by Michelle Dotter
This is a work of fiction. Characters and names appearing in this work are a product of the author’s imagination, and any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
A GOOD MAN: FOREWORD BY SONNY BREWER
THE LOST COUNTRY
FINDING THE LOST COUNTRY: AFTERWORD BY J.M. WHITE
Foreword
A Good Man
by Sonny Brewer
William Gay was a good man. And they aren’t that easy to find.
My great uncle got specific and said a really good man was one in ten thousand. He was a Harvard-trained minister who spent forty years in the pulpit. He was, however, pulling a thread in his clerical cloth hoping to impress me with an opportunity to be somebody just by being good.
Confucius talked about the idea of a good man. He said a good man is kind, has integrity, doesn’t need much, and is willing to put himself at the disposal of other people. But more, while being an archetype, he is not rich or a politician, not a ballplayer or a celebrity—just somebody who understands others, and counts relationships with family and friends above all else. The philosopher said you could spot a good man in a crowd. Something about him, even at a casual glance, welcomes your trust. You don’t have to wear a robe and chant mantras to detect something different in a good man.
The night I met William, we were in a bar in Columbia, South Carolina, in town for the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Association annual conference. It was the fall of 1999. My pal Tom Franklin had mentioned his name to me, said I’d want to get in line on Sunday morning for a signed copy of his chapbook.
“I’ve never heard of this guy,” I said. “Is this something he self-published?”
“No. But it’s independently published by a woman who lives in his hometown,” Tom said. “It’s one short story, in a limited run of 250 copies. All of them numbered.” I had a bookstore back in Fairhope, Alabama: Over the Transom Used and Rare Books. Tom had heard my story about selling one book for more than $6,000 to a collector. “Trust me,” he said, “you haven’t heard of William Gay but that’s about to change when his first novel comes out in November. And you do want to have one of these chapbooks.”
The bar was crowded, people standing up, brushing past, and Tom turned to greet a man.
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