The Barrowfields

Description

Mesmeric in its prose and mythic in its sweep, THE BARROWFIELDS is an extraordinary debut about the darker side of devotion, the limits of forgiveness, and the reparative power of shared pasts. In the remote, mountainous landscape of North Carolina, Henry Aster grows up in the shadow of his eccentric father, a lawyer and frustrated novelist who has chosen to raise his family a gothic mansion - nicknamed 'the vulture house' - worthy of his hero Edgar Allen Poe. Shortly after a tragic family incident, Henry's father disappears into the hills, an incident we only truly understand in the final pages of the novel. As Henry grows up he wants to escape his family, and their house on The Barrowfields, the empty stretch of land in the mountains where nothing has ever been known to grow. However, just like his father, Henry finds himself at law school, where he falls in love for the first time with a girl called Story. As Henry comes of age, he is ultimately drawn back to his family to reconcile his relationship with his surviving sister and the ghosts of his past.