Neverhome

Description

I was strong and he was not so it was me went to war to defend the Republic. I stepped across the border out of Indiana into Ohio. Twenty dollars, two salt-pork sandwiches, and I took jerky, biscuits, six old apples, fresh underthings and a blanket too. There was a conflagration to come; I wanted to lend it my spark. Meet Gallant Ash: hero, folk legend and master of war. Ash is a leader of men and a brutal and fearless soldier. Will look you dead in the eye and kill for no reason. But Ash has a secret. Gallant Ash is a woman. This is her story.

Promotion info

'A beguiling and evocative story about love and loss, duty and deceit... Neverhome took me on a journey so thoroughly engrossed that there were times the pages seemed to turn themselves.' KEVIN POWERS, author of The Yellow Birds

Awards

Shortlisted for Prix Femina 2015.

Reviews

"A brilliant and breathtaking blaze of a novel" -- Clare Clark Guardian "A spare, beautiful novel, so deeply about America and the language of America that its sentences seem to rise up from the earth itself. Laird Hunt had me under his spell from the first word of Neverhome to the last. Magnificent" -- Paul Auster "Neverhome is a wondrous feat. Few novels written in English approach its linguistic verve" -- Eileen Battersby Irish Times "The Civil War has given us so many great literary works that I couldn't have imagined a new fictional approach that was both stunningly original and yet utterly natural, even inevitable. But this is just what Laird Hunt brilliantly delivers in his new novel. The key is his central character: in her voice, her personality, her yearning, she deeply touches our shared and enduring humanity. Neverhome is masterful work by one of our finest writers" -- Robert Olen Butler, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain "With nothing but the simple language of well-worn words, Mr Hunt has conjured up a wholly original heroine with an utterly fresh voice... A book that deserves a wider readership." The Economist

Author description

Laird Hunt is the author of six novels, a collection of stories and two translations. A former United Nations press officer, Laird now teaches Creative Writing at the University of Denver. He and his wife, the poet Eleni Sikelianos, live in Boulder, Colorado, with their daughter, Eva Grace. His work has been published in eight languages. His last novel, Kind One, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and won the Anisfeld-Wolf Award for Fiction. Neverhome is the first of his novels to be published in the UK.