Kind One

An unforgettable tale of slavery in the American South

One of the most talented young writers on the American scene today

There is always a surprise in the voice and in the heart of Laird Hunt’s stories – with its echoes of habit caught in a timeless dialect, so we see the world he gives us as if new

Profoundly imaginative, strikingly original, deeply moving

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. Kind One, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and won the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction.

An unforgettable tale of slavery in the American South 
 
 
Once I lived in a place where demons dwelled. I was one of them. 
 
Ginny lives on her husband’s pig farm ninety miles from nowhere. Far from the paradise she was promised, this is a bleak place and her husband, Linus, a cruel master. His girls, Cleome and Zinnia, are Ginny’s only friends, but when Linus’ attentions turn to them, Ginny is torn. When Linus dies, things change for everyone. 
 
They helped me, but I never helped them.

Neverhome

'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

A brilliant and breathtaking blaze of a novel

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

Neverhome is a wondrous feat. Few novels written in English approach its linguistic verve

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.

Hunt brings an especially bittersweet and lyrical tone to this forgotten part of Civil War history and gives to several hundred women who did indeed make the momentous decision to fight….An amazing book

An exquisitely wrought vision of the terrible ravages of war - on the land, on the human body, and on the mind

This is a slim and unshowy story of devastating power, an epic poem in its own vernacular, an upside-down Odyssey at once particular and hauntingly universal. Quietly, relentlessly, without wasting a word, it works its way under the skin and into the marrow of the bones... Hunt has coaxed a brilliant and breathtaking blaze of a novel.

Staggering... he reinvigorates the American language with a poetic urgency equal to Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The story is strong, the prose superbly wrought.

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.

This book casts such an intoxicating spell…that its end comes as a cold shock… This is an alluring novel with a stubbornly enduring afterlife

One of the strengths of this compelling novel…is its blend of realism with a powerful sense of the folklore around women who defy the expectations of the societies in which they find themselves

Neverhome is a memorable evocation of a life twisted out of shape by violence and cruelty

The ending is in equal parts surprising and satisfying… I was left wanting more from this entrancing novel. Ash is a thoroughly compelling narrator and Neverhome a dark gem of a book

It’s a fascinating slant on history. I am looking forward to reading Neverhome again at a more leisurely pace to savour the language and larger-than-life characters

[Neverhome] is a remarkable achievement. You awake from it as you would from a nightmare — sadder, wiser — knowing that war makes a nest inside you; fear unpicks the soul. And if you return from it intact, you bring it with you

Hunt’s ability to render real events in a fictional form…shouldn’t be underestimated. He pitches his story perfectly, making Constance/Gallant Ash a rounded and psychologically convincing character. His depictions of battle scenes and a landscape ripped apart by war are also striking and authentic.

Laird Hunt is the author of six novels, a collection of stories and two translations. Kind One was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and won the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction, and his last novel, Neverhome, won the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine and The Bridge Prize and was shortlisted for the Prix Femina Étranger. He teaches in the creative writing PhD program at the University of Denver, where he edits the Denver Quarterly. He and his wife, the poet Eleni Sikelianos, live in Boulder, Colorado, with their daughter, Eva Grace.

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.

Laird Hunt

The Evening Road is a vivid, disturbing book, able to subvert itself in half a line, constantly challenging the reader’s expectations. Its ghost map is quickly established in the reader’s head, and as the characters fade into the margin of the final page, it is as if an inner landscape has altered. It is mature, accomplished, impressive.

A strange, dazzling novel, as audacious as it is lyrical, that hauls up insight, sorrow, and even – somehow – wit from the well of American history.

Hunt is an irresistibly inventive writer, slipping easily from crackling dialogue to dreamy lyricism… The Evening Road is a novel of depth and beauty, a meditation on history that speaks eloquently to the present, a book that sidles up behind you until you can feel its hot breath on the back of your neck.

A story told from three viewpoints about the banality of evil, and what ordinary people must accept for that evil to prosper… One of the finest novels so far this year

An astute investigation into the nature of evildoing

In this startling and unforgettable novel, the characters explode off the page like fireworks on a very dark and disturbing night. Days later I’m still thinking about them, still hearing the cadence of Hunt’s poetic language, and still wondering which is more enduring, the darkness or the light.

Wow! Beautifully crafted, seductive, evocative language and a story that punches you in the gut and lays you low and yet leaves you wanting more. It’s rich, deep, dark, harrowing stuff and it does what all great fiction does – it lays ahold of the heart and won’t let go. You’ll think about this book for weeks, if not years, to come.

Daniel James Brown, author of The Boys in the Boat

Engrossing...intriguing... Hunt finds history or the big events useful framing devices, but he is more interested in how words can do justice to single players and life's fraught moments... He is strange, challenging, and a joy to read.

Arresting and disturbing… a haunting novel packed with vivid scenes and memorable characters

Meet Ottie Lee Henshaw. Quick of mind and pleasing to the eye, she navigates a stifling marriage, a lecherous boss, and on one day in the summer of 1920, an odyssey across the countryside to witness a dark and fearful celebration. 
 
Meet Calla Destry. A young black woman desperate to escape a place where the stench of violence hangs heavy in the air, and to find the lover who has promised her a new life. 
 
Two remarkable women on the move through an America riven by fear and hatred. Every road leads to the bedlam of Marvel. There are buses laid on and Klan members gathering. Lives will collide and be changed forever.

Laird Hunt

Praise for The Evening Road

The Evening Road is a vivid, disturbing book, able to subvert itself in half a line, constantly challenging the reader’s expectations. Its ghost map is quickly established in the reader’s head, and as the ...

A strange, dazzling novel, as audacious as it is lyrical, that hauls up insight, sorrow, and even – somehow – wit from the well of American history.

Hunt is an irresistibly inventive writer, slipping easily from crackling dialogue to dreamy lyricism… The Evening Road is a novel of depth and beauty, a meditation on history that speaks eloquently to the pre ...

The Evening Road is a vivid, disturbing book, able to subvert itself in half a line, constantly challenging the reader’s expectations. Its ghost map is quickly established in the reader’s head, and as the ...

A strange, dazzling novel, as audacious as it is lyrical, that hauls up insight, sorrow, and even – somehow – wit from the well of American history.

Hunt is an irresistibly inventive writer, slipping easily from crackling dialogue to dreamy lyricism… The Evening Road is a novel of depth and beauty, a meditation on history that speaks eloquently to the pre ...

The Evening Road is a vivid, disturbing book, able to subvert itself in half a line, constantly challenging the reader’s expectations. Its ghost map is quickly established in the reader’s head, and as the ...

A strange, dazzling novel, as audacious as it is lyrical, that hauls up insight, sorrow, and even – somehow – wit from the well of American history.

Hunt is an irresistibly inventive writer, slipping easily from crackling dialogue to dreamy lyricism… The Evening Road is a novel of depth and beauty, a meditation on history that speaks eloquently to the pre ...

Books by Laird Hunt

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