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The Lund Covenant: A Novel of the San Rafael Swell
Gill Lund has spent his life behind a camera, documenting other people's trouble from a safe distance. Then his father dies in Castle Dale, Utah, and the one story he can't shoot his way out of turns out to be his own.
He goes home for three days -- bury the man, settle the estate, leave. But his father, quiet and stubborn to the end, had been driving into the San Rafael Swell at odd hours, tending water caches hidden for desperate desert travelers. Small mercies, unmarked and unannounced. Until someone found them and destroyed them, methodically, with bleach and a serrated blade.
The evidence leads somewhere no one in town wants to look. And the more Gill asks, the more he understands that his father's silence wasn't indifference -- it was what speaking plainly had already cost the old man here. He kept doing the work anyway.
Gill knows how to document what happened. What he doesn't know is whether he's willing to become part of the story.
Set against the stark beauty of Utah's San Rafael Swell, The Lund Covenant is a literary novel of moral inheritance -- what we owe the dead, what we risk by staying, and what it costs to do quiet work in a loud world. For readers of Kent Haruf, Craig Johnson, and Claire Vaye Watkins.
He goes home for three days -- bury the man, settle the estate, leave. But his father, quiet and stubborn to the end, had been driving into the San Rafael Swell at odd hours, tending water caches hidden for desperate desert travelers. Small mercies, unmarked and unannounced. Until someone found them and destroyed them, methodically, with bleach and a serrated blade.
The evidence leads somewhere no one in town wants to look. And the more Gill asks, the more he understands that his father's silence wasn't indifference -- it was what speaking plainly had already cost the old man here. He kept doing the work anyway.
Gill knows how to document what happened. What he doesn't know is whether he's willing to become part of the story.
Set against the stark beauty of Utah's San Rafael Swell, The Lund Covenant is a literary novel of moral inheritance -- what we owe the dead, what we risk by staying, and what it costs to do quiet work in a loud world. For readers of Kent Haruf, Craig Johnson, and Claire Vaye Watkins.
347 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 2, 2026
About the author
Greg Maxfield
5 books3 followersGreg Maxfield writes literary fiction grounded in the American West, especially the high-desert country of Emery County, Utah, where he grew up in Castle Dale and where his family helped settle the land around the San Rafael Swell.
His novel The Lund Covenant: A Novel of the San Rafael Swell (2026) is literary fiction with a suspense spine, for readers of Kent Haruf, Ron Rash, Marilynne Robinson and Paulette Jiles. He is also the author of Guardians of the Ley Lines: A Novel of the American Southwest and the Operation Granny Files family-history workbooks for families and homeschoolers.
He serializes fiction weekly at The Unfolding Plot on Substack. After 45 years in energy markets, he now writes from the Pacific Northwest and is at work on his next novel. Visit gregmaxfield.com.
His novel The Lund Covenant: A Novel of the San Rafael Swell (2026) is literary fiction with a suspense spine, for readers of Kent Haruf, Ron Rash, Marilynne Robinson and Paulette Jiles. He is also the author of Guardians of the Ley Lines: A Novel of the American Southwest and the Operation Granny Files family-history workbooks for families and homeschoolers.
He serializes fiction weekly at The Unfolding Plot on Substack. After 45 years in energy markets, he now writes from the Pacific Northwest and is at work on his next novel. Visit gregmaxfield.com.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
August 6, 2026
A hard book to review. Somewhat preachy yet poignant. I may have to come back to this review.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review