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The Heart of a Distant Forest: A Novel
Retired professor Andrew Lachlan has returned to his family home on a lake in central Georgia to die. And yet he has never felt so alive, so ready to learn about the natural world around him. Having taught all his life, he is ready for solitude. But a young country boy, Willie Sullivan, disrupts Lachlan’s search for order and rekindles memories he thought long dead.
Lachlan also finds Callie McKenzie, a woman he loved years earlier, and they soon begin to see in each other reflections of the lives they once led. Lachlan’s journal of his year by the lake leads him to a deeper understanding of himself and the world.
Lachlan also finds Callie McKenzie, a woman he loved years earlier, and they soon begin to see in each other reflections of the lives they once led. Lachlan’s journal of his year by the lake leads him to a deeper understanding of himself and the world.
- GenresFiction
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 24, 2015
This novel is set up like the journal of an old and dying man. The words are simple and few, but they have the power of many words. This is a beautiful book and a nice change from other books I've ready lately. It's a sweet reflection on life and what really matters.
August 9, 2024
40 Years After Publication, Noted Author's Novel Still Resonates
This celebrated epistolary novel has what I call staying power. It was first published in hardcover in 1984 by W. W. Norton. In 1985, Ballantine Books released the mass market paperback edition. Twenty-one years after its original publication, University of Georgia Press released the paperback in 2005.
After following the author for several years on Facebook and having had the honor of reviewing his latest novel, Far Beyond the Gates (Mercer University Press) for Southern Literary Review, I wanted to go back and read his first novel that won the prestigious Townsend Prize for Fiction in 1986.
So, I did a search online and snagged a signed, first edition copy. After it arrived, I spent the next few days caught up in this nuanced story about a retired history professor who is dying of a terminal illness. Andrew Lachlan has left behind his former life and moved into the house his grandfather built by a small lake in a forest in central Georgia. Instead of undergoing medical treatments, he has decided to pass whatever time he has left living on the land he roamed as a boy.
New York Times Book Review said this about the novel: “It is precisely because Lachlan is not a larger-than-life character that we come to care and find ourselves moving eagerly with him from one day to the next.”
I concur with this assessment.
The author spares us all the physical details that can come with aging and illness. Instead, he gives us a narrator that plans to spend his time hiking through the woods, fishing at the lake with its resident beaver, and chronicling his days in a journal while still working on a monograph about a historic battle and the plight of the native Americans when they were forced to give up their land.
But early in the novel, a troubled boy named Willie Sullivan shows up on the banks of the lake and Andrew’s plans turn upside down. As he sets out to try and help the boy, Andrew runs into an old flame in town and things get more complicated. Along with his renewed friendship with Callie MacKenzie, Andrew also befriends a high school boy whose dad owns the hardware store.
Still respected and admired by some of his former students, one former student pays a visit and introduces Andrew to a bevy of eager young students. One of those students catches Andrew’s eye even though she’s half a century younger. Things get interesting.
The novel explores themes of the human heart like love, loss, and the search for our place in the world. It also explores the painful truth that we can’t always save others, no matter how hard we try.
I’ll close with a teaser. There’s one scene late in the novel that ends with a line that’s so subtle yet so profound, it left me stunned and sighing with awe at the writing. If I’d had a fire going, I would have stared into the fireplace a long time.
If you love good writing, I hope you'll consider reading The Heart of a Distant Forest. I highly recommend it.
This celebrated epistolary novel has what I call staying power. It was first published in hardcover in 1984 by W. W. Norton. In 1985, Ballantine Books released the mass market paperback edition. Twenty-one years after its original publication, University of Georgia Press released the paperback in 2005.
After following the author for several years on Facebook and having had the honor of reviewing his latest novel, Far Beyond the Gates (Mercer University Press) for Southern Literary Review, I wanted to go back and read his first novel that won the prestigious Townsend Prize for Fiction in 1986.
So, I did a search online and snagged a signed, first edition copy. After it arrived, I spent the next few days caught up in this nuanced story about a retired history professor who is dying of a terminal illness. Andrew Lachlan has left behind his former life and moved into the house his grandfather built by a small lake in a forest in central Georgia. Instead of undergoing medical treatments, he has decided to pass whatever time he has left living on the land he roamed as a boy.
New York Times Book Review said this about the novel: “It is precisely because Lachlan is not a larger-than-life character that we come to care and find ourselves moving eagerly with him from one day to the next.”
I concur with this assessment.
The author spares us all the physical details that can come with aging and illness. Instead, he gives us a narrator that plans to spend his time hiking through the woods, fishing at the lake with its resident beaver, and chronicling his days in a journal while still working on a monograph about a historic battle and the plight of the native Americans when they were forced to give up their land.
But early in the novel, a troubled boy named Willie Sullivan shows up on the banks of the lake and Andrew’s plans turn upside down. As he sets out to try and help the boy, Andrew runs into an old flame in town and things get more complicated. Along with his renewed friendship with Callie MacKenzie, Andrew also befriends a high school boy whose dad owns the hardware store.
Still respected and admired by some of his former students, one former student pays a visit and introduces Andrew to a bevy of eager young students. One of those students catches Andrew’s eye even though she’s half a century younger. Things get interesting.
The novel explores themes of the human heart like love, loss, and the search for our place in the world. It also explores the painful truth that we can’t always save others, no matter how hard we try.
I’ll close with a teaser. There’s one scene late in the novel that ends with a line that’s so subtle yet so profound, it left me stunned and sighing with awe at the writing. If I’d had a fire going, I would have stared into the fireplace a long time.
If you love good writing, I hope you'll consider reading The Heart of a Distant Forest. I highly recommend it.
June 17, 2021
Imagine your college professor asked you to write a book, an essay, even a page about death and dying and what you imagine your death and the process of your dying would be were you given a year to live. Imagine further that you are at the end of a long life of experience, of love, and family, and loss, and that you face the journey alone, just you and your journal. Skip the parts about doctors and disease and instead discover how you are to live out your days and make the most of the time given you. And, yes, make the story not one of dying but one of dying with dignity and purpose. And make the language you choose sing and paint the sights and play the sounds of the world around so that your readers can join you on your journey. Do your best, as even then, your story will pale in comparison to what Philip Lee Williams has put on the page for us.
In one of the many entries I marked, Williams wrote:
“I love the edge of the land, the eyelid of water blinking over the wrack of shells and seaweed through the night, higher, then back again. There is peace in watching the waves throb and then release. I sat at sunset today, the warmth over my shoulders, and saw seagulls buoyed by the breeze, hovering over the water, waiting. And so I sat in the cold sand, waiting, too, listening for my pulse among the motions of the sea.
And one more:
The only thing I fear now is time, and that I may not be able to decide, finally, how to use it.
In one of the many entries I marked, Williams wrote:
“I love the edge of the land, the eyelid of water blinking over the wrack of shells and seaweed through the night, higher, then back again. There is peace in watching the waves throb and then release. I sat at sunset today, the warmth over my shoulders, and saw seagulls buoyed by the breeze, hovering over the water, waiting. And so I sat in the cold sand, waiting, too, listening for my pulse among the motions of the sea.
And one more:
The only thing I fear now is time, and that I may not be able to decide, finally, how to use it.
December 11, 2020
Interesting, moody Georgia writer. Favorite line: "This world's not for sissies."
September 28, 2022
Love this beautiful story. Williams is an excellent story teller. I love his prose.
January 9, 2024
This was a nice book for reading slowly. Being in a journal format, it was completely from the view of the main character, and we see his world - both physical and psychological through his journal.
This provides a good view of his relationships to other people, nature, and himself - especially himself as he slowly succumbs to an unspecified illness. That would sound like a pretty dull and morbid sort of story, but it is not because even though he is coming to the close of life, he still retains the richness and control of awareness. He is still in the game. Nature is the setting - one that gives him a great amount of comfort and solace.
Relationships are also a great source of strength, but as always sometimes complicated and upsetting. The character is a man struggling for grace and dignity at a time in his life when keeping his equilibrium is probably the most important thing to him.
I liked the book a lot for the style and for illuminating a subject area that I'm sure I steer away from. This gently takes you there - to the subject of awareness at the end of life. Because of the journal format, it is an epistolary novel.
This provides a good view of his relationships to other people, nature, and himself - especially himself as he slowly succumbs to an unspecified illness. That would sound like a pretty dull and morbid sort of story, but it is not because even though he is coming to the close of life, he still retains the richness and control of awareness. He is still in the game. Nature is the setting - one that gives him a great amount of comfort and solace.
Relationships are also a great source of strength, but as always sometimes complicated and upsetting. The character is a man struggling for grace and dignity at a time in his life when keeping his equilibrium is probably the most important thing to him.
I liked the book a lot for the style and for illuminating a subject area that I'm sure I steer away from. This gently takes you there - to the subject of awareness at the end of life. Because of the journal format, it is an epistolary novel.
October 6, 2013
A lovely book about a difficult subject . . . the main character, Andrew, has returned to his childhood home, an old house out in the middle Georgia countryside, to die. He's lost his wife and his son, now that he is diagnosed with cancer, he wants no treatment, just peace to be part of the natural world for his final days. The book is told in journal form, with short entries for almost every day between May 1st when he arrives and the next spring when the entries stop. In between, Andrew reunites with a childhood sweetheart and befriends (adopts) a neighbor boy who has lost his parents. Neither of those relationships are easy but through them, Andrew works out a lot of the grief from the death of his wife and only child. Illness and pain don't play much part in this book since Andrew unrealistically stays pain-free and able to go for long walks in the woods until the end. Very nicely written with good observations about the natural world and the soul.
December 4, 2014
This book, written in 1984, is truly amazing. A retired college professor dealing with a life threatening prognosis, his wife having predeceased him, returns to his middle Ga. cabin in the woods to return to nature. It is written as a journal and is beautifully expressed.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews