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In the Fall
A rich and masterful novel about love and the question of race in post-Civil War America; Spanning the post-Civil War era to the edge of the Great Depression in the Fall is an extraordinary epic of three generations of an American family, the dark secrets that blister at its core, and the transcendent bonds between men and women that fuel their lives over the course of six decades. In the twilight of the Civil War, a Union soldier named Norman Pelham is found battle-wounded and near death by Leah, a slave running from a different hell. After Leah nurses him back to health, Norman brings her to his family homestead in Vermont as his wife, and there they begin a family that will be shaped by their passionate devotion to each other and its consequences.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
223 people are currently reading
2550 people want to read
About the author
Jeffrey Lent
13 books146 followersJeffrey Lent was born in Vermont and grew up there and in western New York State, on dairy farms powered mainly by draft horses. He studied Literature and Psychology at Franconia College in New Hampshire and SUNY Purchase. He lived for many years in North Carolina, an enriching and formative experience. Lent currently resides with his wife and two daughters in central Vermont.
His novel In the Fall was a national bestseller reprinted four times in its first month of publication, was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book for 2000, and earned Jeffrey placement in both Barnes & Noble’s and Borders’ new writer programs; his follow-up, Lost Nation, was a summer reading pick of The Washington Post and USA Today. Both novels were BookSense picks, Book of the Month main selections, and have been widely translated. His most recent novel is Before We Sleep.
His novel In the Fall was a national bestseller reprinted four times in its first month of publication, was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book for 2000, and earned Jeffrey placement in both Barnes & Noble’s and Borders’ new writer programs; his follow-up, Lost Nation, was a summer reading pick of The Washington Post and USA Today. Both novels were BookSense picks, Book of the Month main selections, and have been widely translated. His most recent novel is Before We Sleep.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 342 reviews
July 1, 2017
A wonderful story, beautifully told.
Five words that could stand alone as a review of this book, but it's not enough to convey just how wonderful, how beautiful it really is. Leave aside the fact that it is the story of three generations of a family with some serious baggage. Forget the prose that lifts off the page and sings in your brain. The rising and falling action, the descriptions of the natural world, the intrusion of history, attention to detail that never once falls short; all these things are just taken for granted the deeper we go into the Pelham family saga.
What made this book a special one for me is that from 1862 when Norman Pelham leaves his Vermont farm to fight in the Civil War, gets wounded, and brings back the runaway slave girl who nursed him as his wife, until the September of 1929 when their grandson goes to North Carolina to piece together his grandmother's past, I lived every moment of the 67 years of this novel right beside these characters. I felt every ache in their bones, saw the world through their eyes, worried about their children, and loved and hated and tolerated all the same things. I don't know how Jeffrey Lent does this, but he performs some kind of magic with words to insert you into the pages, and doesn't let go until the last sentence.
This book took me one week in actual time to read, but I added 67 years to my reading age, which is already considerable. I'm tired now, but the journey was worth it.
Five words that could stand alone as a review of this book, but it's not enough to convey just how wonderful, how beautiful it really is. Leave aside the fact that it is the story of three generations of a family with some serious baggage. Forget the prose that lifts off the page and sings in your brain. The rising and falling action, the descriptions of the natural world, the intrusion of history, attention to detail that never once falls short; all these things are just taken for granted the deeper we go into the Pelham family saga.
What made this book a special one for me is that from 1862 when Norman Pelham leaves his Vermont farm to fight in the Civil War, gets wounded, and brings back the runaway slave girl who nursed him as his wife, until the September of 1929 when their grandson goes to North Carolina to piece together his grandmother's past, I lived every moment of the 67 years of this novel right beside these characters. I felt every ache in their bones, saw the world through their eyes, worried about their children, and loved and hated and tolerated all the same things. I don't know how Jeffrey Lent does this, but he performs some kind of magic with words to insert you into the pages, and doesn't let go until the last sentence.
This book took me one week in actual time to read, but I added 67 years to my reading age, which is already considerable. I'm tired now, but the journey was worth it.
February 8, 2017
Having borrowed this book from my daughter who had gotten it in a second hand book store and not read and having never myself herd of the author I had no preconceived notion of what these pages had in store for me. However, once I got going I could not put this book down. I say “once I got going” because to be honest I found Lent’s style a bit hard to get use to. And his style is also a bit hard to describe. It is not that he is very descriptive or that the subject matter is historical fiction or that he uses a language is a sort of old colloquial English. All of these may be true but this was not what bothered me. It is more that he has the characters talk, think or emote in a sort of stream of conscious style that is amazingly ripe with emotion and soulful beauty and insight. I found that the thoughts in these passages were both complex and intertwined and yet, once I imbibed them, I found them unbelievably compelling. This is not how I am use to being communicated with. It was, at least for me a bit unnerving and quite taxing at times. I found myself, particularly at first, rereading passages several times to get the full impact of the words. This was hard work, in fact it was too much work and had this been a lesser work of art I would have put it down. But I found profound gravity and deep emotion here. And, fortunately, as I got more accustomed to Lent’s style the effort became less taxing and the read even more enthralling.
Often I found my self agape at the end of passage wondering if this was not perhaps one of the best works of art I had ever had the privilege to read. I would stop and quite latterly exclaim "this guy is an amazing author" and I became convinced as I read that this work by Lent will indeed become a classic and that it will survive the ages.
I do not think this book is for everyone. It is for those who appreciate a great work of fiction. It is for those people who love to be touched in places in their souls that they forgot existed. It is for those who don’t mind a bit of mental work and those who can find beauty even in the scars of the humane condition. I will not reveal the content of the book. Other reviewers have done a bit of this. Besides, I think it is impossible to judge this book by either it’s cover or even it’s reviews. This book will be different things to different people. Too me it is beautiful thing.
Often I found my self agape at the end of passage wondering if this was not perhaps one of the best works of art I had ever had the privilege to read. I would stop and quite latterly exclaim "this guy is an amazing author" and I became convinced as I read that this work by Lent will indeed become a classic and that it will survive the ages.
I do not think this book is for everyone. It is for those who appreciate a great work of fiction. It is for those people who love to be touched in places in their souls that they forgot existed. It is for those who don’t mind a bit of mental work and those who can find beauty even in the scars of the humane condition. I will not reveal the content of the book. Other reviewers have done a bit of this. Besides, I think it is impossible to judge this book by either it’s cover or even it’s reviews. This book will be different things to different people. Too me it is beautiful thing.
September 18, 2007
Writing was good, characters were very believable, but the thing that really irked me about this book was the constant something-big-is-around-the-corner baiting. And in the end, hundreds of pages later, it wasn't that big, or that surprising.
June 12, 2010
Good read.....not. I very rarely (I don't think ever) give one star for a book. I love to read and can usually find something to like about almost any book I read. This was my exception. If you like slogging through heavy prose and 70 word sentences then this is definitely the book for you. I, however, had a hard time finishing it. I did finish though, because part of me kept wanting so badly for it to get better. This time period is one of my favorites and I was really looking foward to exploring the post-Civil War themes that the synopsis promised. I just felt I had to wade through so much "stuff" to get to the "meat" of the story and once there, there wasn't much to bite. And after all of that slogging the ending was especially disappointing. The secret revealed, feels contrived and not as shocking as the synopsis promises. All in all a great disappointment and leaves me wondering why I didn't just listen to my gut feeling and move on the next book on the shelf.
November 12, 2013
There's something suspicious about the power of Jeffrey Lent's "In the Fall." Is this really the work of a first-time novelist, or is it some late discovery of a book by William Faulkner?
"In the Fall" moves through three generations of the Pelham family with stunning success. The novel starts in gloaming silence, deep in the Vermont woods, and builds like a thunderstorm coming over the horizon. By the end, 60 years and more than 500 pages later, the lightning scalps your soul.
When young Norman decides to do his part in the Civil War, he and his father have nothing to say to each other. "They rode on to the strained creak of harness leather above the heavy wheels crumbling the road dust, the father's heart clattering as if loosed from a pivot in his chest and the heart of the boy also in fearsome ratchet."
When he walks back to Vermont three years later with a young black wife, his father is already dead and enough personal and national history has been interred to poison the ground for decades.
Norman's mother and sister hold the right Abolitionist notions, but those are sorely tested by the presence of the first black person they've ever seen. Leah is a headstrong woman who escaped slavery in the final months of the war by murdering her one-armed owner in Sweetboro, N.C.
Though Norman adores her, though her in-laws accept her, though her three new children delight her, eventually nothing can quell her thirst for knowledge about the family she left behind.
The past is a palpable presence in this novel, never fading so much as sinking into the soil out of which each new generation grows. Lent has an almost geological patience when it comes to laying down the layers that make up his plot and characters.
Weary of the taunts and isolation of being a mixed-race child, Norman's youngest son, Jamie, slips away from the farm while the others sleep. The novel's second part shifts to Bethlehem, N.H., where Jamie quickly falls in love with a crude bar singer from Quebec and remakes himself as a bootlegger in a thicket of corruption.
If the novel has any flaw, it's a touch of pulp that swells up during a few love scenes. Violence and rape cause all kinds of physical and emotional problems for these characters, but their lovemaking still sounds like one of Victoria's Secrets.
Nevertheless, Lent proves himself as adept with this small-time gangster tale as he is with the story in the deep Vermont woods. Jamie's growing frustration with his unstable life is perfectly, painfully drawn. "He rose each day," Lent writes, "not rested but further abraded as if the sheets and the hours in the armchair worked at the thin layer of skin over him that was daily nothing more than a sack to hold his stranded heart."
In the novel's final section, Jamie's son, Foster, returns to his grandmother's story, driven by the same deadly urge for knowledge and understanding that ruined her life.
Now almost entirely dialogue, the novel shifts to Foster's conversation with an old man who seems to hold the key to his family's genealogy of anguish. By this time, we're entirely caught up with Foster's grimaced search for the truth, a racial history fitfully buried beneath generations of lies and generalized guilt.
Confronted with his blood-soaked past, Foster "wondered how a man might know this and go on." But in the end, he realizes that knowing this is, in fact, the only way forward.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2000/0406/p1...
"In the Fall" moves through three generations of the Pelham family with stunning success. The novel starts in gloaming silence, deep in the Vermont woods, and builds like a thunderstorm coming over the horizon. By the end, 60 years and more than 500 pages later, the lightning scalps your soul.
When young Norman decides to do his part in the Civil War, he and his father have nothing to say to each other. "They rode on to the strained creak of harness leather above the heavy wheels crumbling the road dust, the father's heart clattering as if loosed from a pivot in his chest and the heart of the boy also in fearsome ratchet."
When he walks back to Vermont three years later with a young black wife, his father is already dead and enough personal and national history has been interred to poison the ground for decades.
Norman's mother and sister hold the right Abolitionist notions, but those are sorely tested by the presence of the first black person they've ever seen. Leah is a headstrong woman who escaped slavery in the final months of the war by murdering her one-armed owner in Sweetboro, N.C.
Though Norman adores her, though her in-laws accept her, though her three new children delight her, eventually nothing can quell her thirst for knowledge about the family she left behind.
The past is a palpable presence in this novel, never fading so much as sinking into the soil out of which each new generation grows. Lent has an almost geological patience when it comes to laying down the layers that make up his plot and characters.
Weary of the taunts and isolation of being a mixed-race child, Norman's youngest son, Jamie, slips away from the farm while the others sleep. The novel's second part shifts to Bethlehem, N.H., where Jamie quickly falls in love with a crude bar singer from Quebec and remakes himself as a bootlegger in a thicket of corruption.
If the novel has any flaw, it's a touch of pulp that swells up during a few love scenes. Violence and rape cause all kinds of physical and emotional problems for these characters, but their lovemaking still sounds like one of Victoria's Secrets.
Nevertheless, Lent proves himself as adept with this small-time gangster tale as he is with the story in the deep Vermont woods. Jamie's growing frustration with his unstable life is perfectly, painfully drawn. "He rose each day," Lent writes, "not rested but further abraded as if the sheets and the hours in the armchair worked at the thin layer of skin over him that was daily nothing more than a sack to hold his stranded heart."
In the novel's final section, Jamie's son, Foster, returns to his grandmother's story, driven by the same deadly urge for knowledge and understanding that ruined her life.
Now almost entirely dialogue, the novel shifts to Foster's conversation with an old man who seems to hold the key to his family's genealogy of anguish. By this time, we're entirely caught up with Foster's grimaced search for the truth, a racial history fitfully buried beneath generations of lies and generalized guilt.
Confronted with his blood-soaked past, Foster "wondered how a man might know this and go on." But in the end, he realizes that knowing this is, in fact, the only way forward.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2000/0406/p1...
May 1, 2013
Honestly I had a difficult time with the writing style of this book from the start in that it seems to try to use the broken English dialect of the Civil War era Americanease. The book jumps about from time to time in an odd fashion which makes you feel disoriented with what's happening. I put it down after a few chapters, growing tired of hearing about life on the farm and the difficulties the family has with farm life and integrating a black woman into the family farm. Sorry Mr Lent, I tried.
February 22, 2014
What beautiful writing, truly breathtaking. the story was compelling,at times heart wrenching. loved norman and leah,prudence and abigail,and Foster!! So many beautiful lines and passages ....just one "He was not simple in love but ferocious with it." Thank you Jeffery Lent,want to read more of your stories.
September 22, 2009
This was almost a 5 star book for me. I loved the language, the writing the characters. I was transfixed by the first characters introduced and the family saga that developed from the battle fields of the civil war to the bootlegging in the New England states.
There were moments in the writing that you stopped and reread the words and wanted to share their beauty with someone but knowing that only you in that moment could experience the full meaning... just beautiful.
There were moments in the writing that you stopped and reread the words and wanted to share their beauty with someone but knowing that only you in that moment could experience the full meaning... just beautiful.
April 16, 2019
My only regret with this book is that it took me two and half months to read. I had a lot going on and this book is detailed, dense and heavy. But all in a good and positive way. The author does not let up with the heavy subject matter. Good grief, the last 10 pages are brutally heavy on the heart. I might be wounded by knowing the details and the answers. Quote from last pages might explain some of my grief, “oh boy,” he said turning from her, “am I ever f#%ked up.” Thanks to Diane B for the recommendation.
March 5, 2021
Another great book by Jeffrey Lent. If I have a single criticism, it's that this one could have used a little editing; it's really, really long, and heavy on description. Then again, description is one of Lent's strong points, and this is a sprawling family saga that runs through three generations. Besides, despite it's length, this is a real page-turner overall.
The novel opens with Norman Pelham, a twice-wounded veteran of the Civil War, making his way back home to Vermont after being released from service. He's accompanied by Leah, a beautiful runaway slave. Instead of taking a fast train home, Norman decided to walk home from Washington "to see the country"--much to his mother's dismay. And she is even more dismayed to learn that Leah is her son's new wife. It's the late 1860s, and even an abolitionist sympathizer like Mrs. Pelham feels this is taking things a bit too far. She moves into town, leaving the family farm to the young couple, with Norman's younger sister Connie stopping by every day to help out. Part I follows Norman and Leah, along with their children, through the hard times and the good, their love overcoming every challenge and sorrow until a final blow and secrets from the past tear the family apart.
I really don't want to give too much away. Suffice it to say that Part II focuses on the youngest child, Jamie, now an adult making his own way not too far from home. Something seems to haunt him; he's a quiet, overly cautious man but, like his mother, clever and resourceful. Jamie's sixteen-year old son, Foster, who is determined to uncover the truth about his father's past, brings the novel full circle in Part III. The novel explores issues of identity--the idea that we can never escape what made us who we are, and that running away from the past is never a clear-cut solution. Of course, it also examines attitudes towards race in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It's a beautiful story of hope, perseverance, forgiveness, and self-acceptance. Highly recommended.
The novel opens with Norman Pelham, a twice-wounded veteran of the Civil War, making his way back home to Vermont after being released from service. He's accompanied by Leah, a beautiful runaway slave. Instead of taking a fast train home, Norman decided to walk home from Washington "to see the country"--much to his mother's dismay. And she is even more dismayed to learn that Leah is her son's new wife. It's the late 1860s, and even an abolitionist sympathizer like Mrs. Pelham feels this is taking things a bit too far. She moves into town, leaving the family farm to the young couple, with Norman's younger sister Connie stopping by every day to help out. Part I follows Norman and Leah, along with their children, through the hard times and the good, their love overcoming every challenge and sorrow until a final blow and secrets from the past tear the family apart.
I really don't want to give too much away. Suffice it to say that Part II focuses on the youngest child, Jamie, now an adult making his own way not too far from home. Something seems to haunt him; he's a quiet, overly cautious man but, like his mother, clever and resourceful. Jamie's sixteen-year old son, Foster, who is determined to uncover the truth about his father's past, brings the novel full circle in Part III. The novel explores issues of identity--the idea that we can never escape what made us who we are, and that running away from the past is never a clear-cut solution. Of course, it also examines attitudes towards race in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It's a beautiful story of hope, perseverance, forgiveness, and self-acceptance. Highly recommended.
March 24, 2008
This was Jeffrey Lent's 1st novel and most of the action takes place in new England. It is the story of a family's (interracial) life from the end of the Civil War through prohibition. This was the first novel I have read where the issue of "passing" in a white world was a primary theme. The effect of this on a family is devastating and isolating at times. It becomes a "secret". Basically, Norman, the main character walks home to Vermont after the Civil War with the woman who he loves who also happens to be black. The book addresses slavery, racism, sexual struggles and family antagonisms in a unique way. Lent's prose can be difficult but the book is worth ploughing through. It seems particularly timely given current events and the continued prejudices often felt by mixed race people here. It would be an interesting book club choice for discussion.
August 6, 2013
Oh how I love this book! I simply can't wait to get back to it each day. It will not appeal to everyone but I love the story, the characters and the writing is incredible to me. Will follow up this review when finished. This author also wrote Lost Nation one of my favorites.
August 3, 2013
I am 3/4 through this book and I don't want it to end. This authors sentences are so exceptional, descriptions are so vivid, I can visualize these people and care about them!
August 5 2013.
Sad to report I am finished with this book and it was one of the best books I have ever read. Long, and rich with exceptional character development and story line. I can't say enough good things about this writer. I love these people and am sorry to see them go although I have not stopped thinking about them and they will always be with me in my mind
August 3, 2013
I am 3/4 through this book and I don't want it to end. This authors sentences are so exceptional, descriptions are so vivid, I can visualize these people and care about them!
August 5 2013.
Sad to report I am finished with this book and it was one of the best books I have ever read. Long, and rich with exceptional character development and story line. I can't say enough good things about this writer. I love these people and am sorry to see them go although I have not stopped thinking about them and they will always be with me in my mind
July 9, 2015
I tried. I really did. But this is one strange phenomenon. Did over a thousand readers really fail to notice that this is one obnoxious run on sentence? Where was the editor? My brain hurts now. I'm afraid it might be contagious. I didn't learn to break sentences apart into meaningful, clear an concise ideas easily. I was a fan of the run- on, I truly was, until at least seventh grade.
I threw it out, a hard cover! into the recycling bin, fearful someone young and impressionable would pick up the subject-free, run-on sentence habit.
I threw it out, a hard cover! into the recycling bin, fearful someone young and impressionable would pick up the subject-free, run-on sentence habit.
December 26, 2022
A three-generation family saga set in post-Civil War era...beautifully written. The only reason for 4 stars instead of the 5 is the violence that is portrayed so vividly. Although disturbing, this one doesn't immediately leave your memory. The characters are fully flushed out and the story keeps you interested throughout. High recommendations for those who don't mind a "gritty" book.
January 20, 2022
It’s fairly well-written with excellent descriptions and language; while slow-moving, there is plenty of lingering mystery and a bit of shock value. It’s a period piece, or rather an era piece that begins around the Civil War and ends right before the depression.
The subject material wasn’t really for me, I found the revelations disturbing but I’ll admit there was some power to them and I realize this goes on with families in the real world.
There’s a lot of dysfunctional relationships and a lot of violence so be prepared for that.
One of the main characters (no spoilers!) is 16 years-old and it just didn’t seem genuine. I know some kids grow up fast, but this one seemed to have the voice and street smarts of a 30 year-old! There were some inconsistencies with characters from my perspective.
This is no feel-good book but one that aims to have meaning, that perhaps was partly lost on me.
The subject material wasn’t really for me, I found the revelations disturbing but I’ll admit there was some power to them and I realize this goes on with families in the real world.
There’s a lot of dysfunctional relationships and a lot of violence so be prepared for that.
One of the main characters (no spoilers!) is 16 years-old and it just didn’t seem genuine. I know some kids grow up fast, but this one seemed to have the voice and street smarts of a 30 year-old! There were some inconsistencies with characters from my perspective.
This is no feel-good book but one that aims to have meaning, that perhaps was partly lost on me.
June 16, 2025
I love to hate this book, because it portrays a misogynistic, racist society in terms of what I can possess, what I do possess, and that humans "own other humans." Since this premise is so disgusting, this was a difficult read. There was betrayal, lying, and a twisting of the truth that can only be described as psychopathic.
The book details the union of a Vermont Civil War soldier injured in one of the last battles and a run-away slave (also fugitive killer) who nurses him back to health. Two complicated generations later, the grandson confronts the half-brother of the fugitive killer back in her slave state.
If you want a twisted tale that is well written, prosaic, authentic, true-to-period, veridical speech that will anger you mostly, then this is the book for you. Lent is masterful as he tells the story through his characters. But be prepared for a meteor shower of emotion as you go!
The book details the union of a Vermont Civil War soldier injured in one of the last battles and a run-away slave (also fugitive killer) who nurses him back to health. Two complicated generations later, the grandson confronts the half-brother of the fugitive killer back in her slave state.
If you want a twisted tale that is well written, prosaic, authentic, true-to-period, veridical speech that will anger you mostly, then this is the book for you. Lent is masterful as he tells the story through his characters. But be prepared for a meteor shower of emotion as you go!
May 30, 2012
CML - Hilliard Branch Book Group selection (October 2001)
A work of literary writing genius. An incredible story that stretches across generations written in a language of melodic prose.
Book description from Amazon.com: "In the twilight of the Civil War, Leah, an escaped slave, discovers Norman Pelham, a wounded soldier who lies dying in a battlefield outside Richmond. After she nurses him back to health, Norman brings her to his family farm in Vermont as his wife, and they begin a family. Now the mother of three, and however begrudgingly, accepted in the community, Leah travels back to the South of her birth and returns with a secret that threatens to destroy what she and Norman had created. Her son Jamie, passing for white, escapes his legacy and enters a world of petty bootlegging, achieving a kind of respectability in the Prohibition era, but also suffering wrenching losses. At the eve of the Great Depression his son, Foster, retraces the path taken by his grandmother and finally confronts the secret exposed by an unknown white uncle, the legacy of slavery, and the painful intricacies of race."
A work of literary writing genius. An incredible story that stretches across generations written in a language of melodic prose.
Book description from Amazon.com: "In the twilight of the Civil War, Leah, an escaped slave, discovers Norman Pelham, a wounded soldier who lies dying in a battlefield outside Richmond. After she nurses him back to health, Norman brings her to his family farm in Vermont as his wife, and they begin a family. Now the mother of three, and however begrudgingly, accepted in the community, Leah travels back to the South of her birth and returns with a secret that threatens to destroy what she and Norman had created. Her son Jamie, passing for white, escapes his legacy and enters a world of petty bootlegging, achieving a kind of respectability in the Prohibition era, but also suffering wrenching losses. At the eve of the Great Depression his son, Foster, retraces the path taken by his grandmother and finally confronts the secret exposed by an unknown white uncle, the legacy of slavery, and the painful intricacies of race."
October 15, 2020
I'm conflicted. I really didn't like the first half or so of the book and nearly called it quits several times. The writing was so pretentious and overly wordy that it bogged down the story. There's a good story in there somewhere, but it was smothered in unnecessary verbiage. I don't really know how to describe it. The story felt muffled, hidden. I'm not sure if this was purposefully done, but I found it tiresome.
I rather enjoyed the last half and was of a mind to give the book 3 stars until the ending. I won't spoil it, but the ending reinforced my 2 star rating. Very disappointing. In the end, I really liked some of the characters, and I don't think they were given the story they deserve.
I rather enjoyed the last half and was of a mind to give the book 3 stars until the ending. I won't spoil it, but the ending reinforced my 2 star rating. Very disappointing. In the end, I really liked some of the characters, and I don't think they were given the story they deserve.
September 23, 2023
This book was a like hiking up a steep and gruelling trail - your feet constantly catching in tree roots and rocks, the burn in your legs steadily intensifying, your lungs aching. But you keep going because you tell yourself you are not a quitter. A true test of endurance. There are things along the way that reinforce your decision to persevere, like a pretty cluster of mushrooms at the base of a towering cedar, a glimpse of a nearby river running alongside the trail, a butterfly floating past you. The sights get sweeter and sweeter as you go along and the more desperate you become to reach the peak and see how it all comes together in the end. And then you reach the summit and the view takes your breath away and brings a tear to your eye. That is what reading this book was like.
November 30, 2016
It's hard to believe this is Lent's first novel. It is so rich in character, action, and landscape, beautifully told. He delves deep into the consciousness of people and puzzles over their intentions and rationalizations, and how truly fouled up we all are.
November 6, 2016
Heel goed boek alhoewel een beetje langdradig geschreven.
November 27, 2022
One of my dad’s favorite books. It took me a while to get into it but once I did, I enjoyed the multi generational story and thought it was well written.
May 28, 2021
3.5 Sometimes I loved this book and sometimes I skipped whole paragraphs, so I'm confused about how to rate it. When it was good it was very, very good, but when it was overwrought it was impenetrable. I'm glad this wasn't my first Lent novel (I loved A Slant of Light and After You've Gone) or I might have given up during the first part of the book where the language was so convoluted and the characters' rambles seemed improbably philosophic. One paragraph Lent seemed to channel Hemingway with short brusqueness and the next he was mired in Faulkneresque monumental sentences. At the same time, the runaway slave/post Civil War love story of this first generation was compelling. The writing had more flow with the next two generations and Lent did a good job of developing his anti-hero character of Jamie. The ending was a bit disappointing, but overall I think Lent's intensity, atmospheric setting, complex characters and deeply poetic style will have a lasting impression on this reader.
August 18, 2025
I loved this multigenerational, complex story but I hated the writing style. I also deducted a star because I felt the story was a little long winded with it being almost 550 pages.
February 26, 2021
Long, sweeping story that kept me interested throughout
February 9, 2024
3.5 stars
March 16, 2018
In many respects Jeffrey Lent’s In the Fall is a remarkable historical novel. Lent is a skilled narrator, he is knowledgeable about his subject matter, his observations about human conduct are incisive, and his characters are intriguingly exceptionally complex.
Lent’s story spans three generations. It is essentially three novels all of which relate to a violent event that occurs in Sweetboro, North Carolina, at the end of the Civil War. Without giving away important details in the story, I offer the following summary.
A young slave girl, Leah, is sexually attacked by her white, half-brother Alexander Mebane. She strikes his head with the hot iron that she has grasped off the kitchen stove. Believing that he is dead, she seeks advice from the stable-man, old slave Peter about how to escape. Days later she encounters Norman Pelham, a wounded Vermont soldier, lying in underbrush as the Civil War comes to a close. Sensing that he is a kind man, believing that she must atone for killing Mebane, she nurses him to health. They commit to each other and walked back to his family’s farm in Randolph, Vermont. They are married; they have three children. Leah is haunted by what she has left behind in North Carolina. Twenty-five years after the 1865 traumatic event, she goes back to Sweetboro to find answers to questions that have progressively daunted her.
The second part of the novel focuses on Leah and Norman’s youngest child, Jamie. At the age on nineteen, in 1904, he leaves the family farm and finds work in Barre, Vermont, making deliveries of home-made whiskey for his criminal boss. He meets a young woman, Joey, a singer at a local, private night club. He befriends her and then rescues her after she has been beaten by the brother of city police chief. They flee to Bethlehem, New Hampshire, close to Mount Washington, a tourist town with grand hotels that cater to the rich and famous. Jamie becomes a hotel manager and eventually establishes a bootleg whiskey business. Joey pursues a higher level singing career. After a rocky relationship, they marry. They have two children. Tragedies follow.
The third part of In the Fall is about part of the sixteenth year of Jamie and Joey’s older child, Foster Pelham. Living on his own, discovering a letter to his father from one of Norman Pelham’s daughters in Randolph, he goes to his deceased grandparents’ farm and learns from his two aunts the story of his grandparents’ meeting and what the aunts know about Leah’s return to Sweetboro twenty-five years afterward. Foster has not known anything about his grandparents. Intrigued, empathetic, Foster goes to Sweetboro. He discovers that Alexander Mebane is alive and is the source of the evil that has adversely affected his grandparents’ lives, his father’s life, and his own short life.
This exchange between Leah and Norman illustrates Lent’s narrative skills: pointed dialogue, visual clarity, intimation of depth of character, attention to detail.
She said, “I look at you, you know what I see? Norman?”
“I got no idea.”
“I see a man gentle right down in his soul. All the way down.”
Then she was quiet and when she spoke again her voice had lost a little edge and he heard it right away, a little less certainty and he felt this loss in his chest like hot water. She said, “So me. You look at me what do you see? Norman?”
His face furrowed like a spring field, wanting to get this just right. He had no idea what to say and kept looking at her hoping she’d wait for him, hoping she’d be patient. Hoping he’d find his way not out but through this.
She didn’t wait. She said, “You see a little nigger girl wanting to eat up your biscuit, your bacon, whatever you got? You see me thinking my taking care of you once overnight is something I can trade for lots more than that? Or maybe even just nigger pussy ready for you to say the right words, do the right thing? That what you see, Norman? And she reared back away from him now, sitting still on the bench, upright as if at a great distance, her back arched like a drawn bow, eyes burning wide open as her soul welled up but not at all ready to pour out without something back from him. He watched his hands turning one over the other, the fingers lacing and relacing until he realized she was watching him do this. He slid around and lifted his right leg over the bench so he sat straddle-legged facing her front on. With his face collapsed in sheer terror, he said to her, “Leah. All I see is the most lovely girl I’ve ever seen.”
She stood off the bench away from him and said, “I told you the truth, Norman. I told you the truth. But you lying to me if that’s all you see.”
And without even thinking about it he said, “What I see in the most lovely girl and one fat wide world of trouble. Trouble for both of us. That’s what I see.”
And now she stepped back over the bench to face him and said, “You got that right. You got that just exactly right.” He reached and took one of her hands and sat looking down at their hands lying one into the other, the small slip of warmth between his fingers, her life lying up against his, and still not looking at her he said, “Don’t you ever talk that way to me again Leah.”
“What way?” Her voice low, already knowing, needing to ask, needing him to tell her.
So he said, “That nigger-this nigger-that business.”
Lent’s story exudes authenticity. Here is what Joey tells Jamie about her being an entertainer.
“What that means is I wear outfits that make clear there’s a girl underneath and five or six times a night I stand up on Charlie’s little stage and sing. Songs like ‘If You Were a Kinder Fellow Than the Kind of Fellow You Are’ or ‘The Man Was a Stranger to Me’ … Between numbers I have to circulate, work up the crowd. Keep em buying drinks, let em buy me drinks – which is always nothing but cold tea. … Fellows tip you for a song, you flirt a little bit, they tip some more. And there’s some who’ll get a crush on a girl and bring presents to her, give her money that sort of thing. Charlie doesn’t allow his girls to hook but that doesn’t mean some of the girls some of the times don’t make arrangements to meet men outside of the club. … Now, the thing about that business is you have to pick and choose. Because what you want to do is keep the fellow coming around, both to the club and on the side. So you have to work them along, maybe giving a little but mostly putting the idea always in their heads like they’re getting far more than they are, or like they’re just about to.
I was especially impressed that Lent delved into the human psyche regarding coming to terms with one’s aberrant behavior. Here are several examples.
Norman: Telling himself no event lies or falls unconnected to others and that will is only the backbone needed to face these things head on.
Leah: But it was cowards finally who believe they can lay down one life and pick up another and not have them meet again. … That no punishment could be greater than to find in herself that all the rest of her life, that new life, all that was made from a lie. Lying to herself.
Jamie: He believed in luck. Not the ordinary luck that comes to all in runs of good or bad seemingly out of nowhere but luck searched out, sought in the corners and back rooms and cobwebbed recesses where no other might think to look. Luck, then earned someway.
Jamie: We can’t ever learn a thing. We just keep doing the same things over and over. Not even intentional. Like we can’t help ourselves. Like it’s who we really are. That’s it – we spend our lives just becoming what we already someway know we are.
Jamie: Mostly, …people are cruel, given the chance.
Abigail (Jamie’s sister, to Foster): He hated himself, your father did. Hated what he was. Ran out of here and never would come back. Because he did not want to be what he was. The same way Mother thought she could leave her old life behind clean he did the same. But it does not work that way.
Mebane: Every man is a curious thing – each one of us thinks we are nothing so much as our ownselves even as we fume about what had been done to us by others but we almost never see how we pass those wrongs along; we have our reasons for doing what we do and believe them not only to be right but the way things are, the way they have to be.
Mebane: Evil is not a thing that just sums up in a man. No. It is a thread that begins to run in a small way and then falls down through the years and generations to gain weight as it goes.
Mebane: It’s what we all do – we find a way to allow what we want but should not.
Mebane: That is what regret does. It allows you to live with yourself. You know what they say – all men in prison are innocent? … it’s that they grow to understand themselves in such a way as to see that moment, the trigger that set them off in the first place, that got them to where they are, they see that as something separate from themselves. They come to believe, to know, that ever again their choice would be a different one. Not only in the past but in the future. Because they cannot allow the truth.
In the Fall is well worth a reader’s time to read.
Lent’s story spans three generations. It is essentially three novels all of which relate to a violent event that occurs in Sweetboro, North Carolina, at the end of the Civil War. Without giving away important details in the story, I offer the following summary.
A young slave girl, Leah, is sexually attacked by her white, half-brother Alexander Mebane. She strikes his head with the hot iron that she has grasped off the kitchen stove. Believing that he is dead, she seeks advice from the stable-man, old slave Peter about how to escape. Days later she encounters Norman Pelham, a wounded Vermont soldier, lying in underbrush as the Civil War comes to a close. Sensing that he is a kind man, believing that she must atone for killing Mebane, she nurses him to health. They commit to each other and walked back to his family’s farm in Randolph, Vermont. They are married; they have three children. Leah is haunted by what she has left behind in North Carolina. Twenty-five years after the 1865 traumatic event, she goes back to Sweetboro to find answers to questions that have progressively daunted her.
The second part of the novel focuses on Leah and Norman’s youngest child, Jamie. At the age on nineteen, in 1904, he leaves the family farm and finds work in Barre, Vermont, making deliveries of home-made whiskey for his criminal boss. He meets a young woman, Joey, a singer at a local, private night club. He befriends her and then rescues her after she has been beaten by the brother of city police chief. They flee to Bethlehem, New Hampshire, close to Mount Washington, a tourist town with grand hotels that cater to the rich and famous. Jamie becomes a hotel manager and eventually establishes a bootleg whiskey business. Joey pursues a higher level singing career. After a rocky relationship, they marry. They have two children. Tragedies follow.
The third part of In the Fall is about part of the sixteenth year of Jamie and Joey’s older child, Foster Pelham. Living on his own, discovering a letter to his father from one of Norman Pelham’s daughters in Randolph, he goes to his deceased grandparents’ farm and learns from his two aunts the story of his grandparents’ meeting and what the aunts know about Leah’s return to Sweetboro twenty-five years afterward. Foster has not known anything about his grandparents. Intrigued, empathetic, Foster goes to Sweetboro. He discovers that Alexander Mebane is alive and is the source of the evil that has adversely affected his grandparents’ lives, his father’s life, and his own short life.
This exchange between Leah and Norman illustrates Lent’s narrative skills: pointed dialogue, visual clarity, intimation of depth of character, attention to detail.
She said, “I look at you, you know what I see? Norman?”
“I got no idea.”
“I see a man gentle right down in his soul. All the way down.”
Then she was quiet and when she spoke again her voice had lost a little edge and he heard it right away, a little less certainty and he felt this loss in his chest like hot water. She said, “So me. You look at me what do you see? Norman?”
His face furrowed like a spring field, wanting to get this just right. He had no idea what to say and kept looking at her hoping she’d wait for him, hoping she’d be patient. Hoping he’d find his way not out but through this.
She didn’t wait. She said, “You see a little nigger girl wanting to eat up your biscuit, your bacon, whatever you got? You see me thinking my taking care of you once overnight is something I can trade for lots more than that? Or maybe even just nigger pussy ready for you to say the right words, do the right thing? That what you see, Norman? And she reared back away from him now, sitting still on the bench, upright as if at a great distance, her back arched like a drawn bow, eyes burning wide open as her soul welled up but not at all ready to pour out without something back from him. He watched his hands turning one over the other, the fingers lacing and relacing until he realized she was watching him do this. He slid around and lifted his right leg over the bench so he sat straddle-legged facing her front on. With his face collapsed in sheer terror, he said to her, “Leah. All I see is the most lovely girl I’ve ever seen.”
She stood off the bench away from him and said, “I told you the truth, Norman. I told you the truth. But you lying to me if that’s all you see.”
And without even thinking about it he said, “What I see in the most lovely girl and one fat wide world of trouble. Trouble for both of us. That’s what I see.”
And now she stepped back over the bench to face him and said, “You got that right. You got that just exactly right.” He reached and took one of her hands and sat looking down at their hands lying one into the other, the small slip of warmth between his fingers, her life lying up against his, and still not looking at her he said, “Don’t you ever talk that way to me again Leah.”
“What way?” Her voice low, already knowing, needing to ask, needing him to tell her.
So he said, “That nigger-this nigger-that business.”
Lent’s story exudes authenticity. Here is what Joey tells Jamie about her being an entertainer.
“What that means is I wear outfits that make clear there’s a girl underneath and five or six times a night I stand up on Charlie’s little stage and sing. Songs like ‘If You Were a Kinder Fellow Than the Kind of Fellow You Are’ or ‘The Man Was a Stranger to Me’ … Between numbers I have to circulate, work up the crowd. Keep em buying drinks, let em buy me drinks – which is always nothing but cold tea. … Fellows tip you for a song, you flirt a little bit, they tip some more. And there’s some who’ll get a crush on a girl and bring presents to her, give her money that sort of thing. Charlie doesn’t allow his girls to hook but that doesn’t mean some of the girls some of the times don’t make arrangements to meet men outside of the club. … Now, the thing about that business is you have to pick and choose. Because what you want to do is keep the fellow coming around, both to the club and on the side. So you have to work them along, maybe giving a little but mostly putting the idea always in their heads like they’re getting far more than they are, or like they’re just about to.
I was especially impressed that Lent delved into the human psyche regarding coming to terms with one’s aberrant behavior. Here are several examples.
Norman: Telling himself no event lies or falls unconnected to others and that will is only the backbone needed to face these things head on.
Leah: But it was cowards finally who believe they can lay down one life and pick up another and not have them meet again. … That no punishment could be greater than to find in herself that all the rest of her life, that new life, all that was made from a lie. Lying to herself.
Jamie: He believed in luck. Not the ordinary luck that comes to all in runs of good or bad seemingly out of nowhere but luck searched out, sought in the corners and back rooms and cobwebbed recesses where no other might think to look. Luck, then earned someway.
Jamie: We can’t ever learn a thing. We just keep doing the same things over and over. Not even intentional. Like we can’t help ourselves. Like it’s who we really are. That’s it – we spend our lives just becoming what we already someway know we are.
Jamie: Mostly, …people are cruel, given the chance.
Abigail (Jamie’s sister, to Foster): He hated himself, your father did. Hated what he was. Ran out of here and never would come back. Because he did not want to be what he was. The same way Mother thought she could leave her old life behind clean he did the same. But it does not work that way.
Mebane: Every man is a curious thing – each one of us thinks we are nothing so much as our ownselves even as we fume about what had been done to us by others but we almost never see how we pass those wrongs along; we have our reasons for doing what we do and believe them not only to be right but the way things are, the way they have to be.
Mebane: Evil is not a thing that just sums up in a man. No. It is a thread that begins to run in a small way and then falls down through the years and generations to gain weight as it goes.
Mebane: It’s what we all do – we find a way to allow what we want but should not.
Mebane: That is what regret does. It allows you to live with yourself. You know what they say – all men in prison are innocent? … it’s that they grow to understand themselves in such a way as to see that moment, the trigger that set them off in the first place, that got them to where they are, they see that as something separate from themselves. They come to believe, to know, that ever again their choice would be a different one. Not only in the past but in the future. Because they cannot allow the truth.
In the Fall is well worth a reader’s time to read.
September 2, 2010
I don't know what to say about this one. I could not take my nose out of it, wanting to get to the mystery at the end. A multi-generational saga set between the War of Southern Aggression and Prohibition.
A couple of quotes to give you and idea:
"The problem, Jamie had long felt, was not the people weren't capable of telling the truth; it was that they weren't able to understand what they were hearing. The truth was no a line from here to there, and not ever-widening circles like the rings on a sawn lag, but rather trails of oscillation overlapping liquid that poured forth but then assumed a shape and life of their own, that circle back around in spirals and fluctuations to touch and color all truths that came out after that one. So a thing was not one thing but many things. A fact many facts. He understood this perfectly and understood also that with the first words out of his mouth this understanding would collapse to a small mean thing, a target to be driven home toward. There was the sensation of being trapped, caught between who he was and what could be explained."
Can you stand more?
"Because what he had learned in the woods was that everything new is only a shift in what is already known. Some shift of the familiar. A new pattern, nothing more than that. The world was knowable. He knew that much He was fourteen......"
Whoa.......
A couple of quotes to give you and idea:
"The problem, Jamie had long felt, was not the people weren't capable of telling the truth; it was that they weren't able to understand what they were hearing. The truth was no a line from here to there, and not ever-widening circles like the rings on a sawn lag, but rather trails of oscillation overlapping liquid that poured forth but then assumed a shape and life of their own, that circle back around in spirals and fluctuations to touch and color all truths that came out after that one. So a thing was not one thing but many things. A fact many facts. He understood this perfectly and understood also that with the first words out of his mouth this understanding would collapse to a small mean thing, a target to be driven home toward. There was the sensation of being trapped, caught between who he was and what could be explained."
Can you stand more?
"Because what he had learned in the woods was that everything new is only a shift in what is already known. Some shift of the familiar. A new pattern, nothing more than that. The world was knowable. He knew that much He was fourteen......"
Whoa.......
August 27, 2013
Lush and lovely, In The Fall is an immersive, and deeply flawed take on Big American Themes of family, race, and identity. Lent's prose is long-winded and beautiful but will be pure agony for readers in search of brevity. The guy does his own thing syntax-wise, mixing three-word sentences with ones that go on for half a page, ignoring conventional grammar rules and relying a tad too much on philosophical similes. Still, the plot moves along briskly enough. The first third of the novel is incredible. I would have read an entire novel about only Leah and Norman....in fact, I kind of wish I had. The novel's lyricism becomes strained towards the end, as Lent's characters are forced to make explicit and grandiose proclamations about subjects the novel is best at exploring implicitly through character and circumstance. Also, be aware that you're not going to find any good female characters in here. This is a novel about male legacy first and foremost, and there is a legit Manic Pixie Dream Girl in the third act. Overall, I'm glad I read it, but it's going to take some time to digest. Reading In the Fall was like eating a big, homemade meal: some of it was really good and some of was overcooked, but I finished it feeling full and satisfied.
March 30, 2009
In many ways, this book reminds me of Anna Karenina. There are historical aspects, love interests, views on class and race and general thoughts on life and how different people live it. There is no easy and quick way to sum up a book like this. It is too multi-faceted.
The book is written in three parts. It starts in the Civil War. A young man from Vermont is wounded, found by a runaway slave and falls in love. Then, we move on with one of his son's who is determined to get away from the Vermont farm. The story is finished with the son's son, who is looking to lace up the pieces of his history.
Well told. Slow moving. Interesting topics. Slightly disappointing (but not bad) ending.
The book is written in three parts. It starts in the Civil War. A young man from Vermont is wounded, found by a runaway slave and falls in love. Then, we move on with one of his son's who is determined to get away from the Vermont farm. The story is finished with the son's son, who is looking to lace up the pieces of his history.
Well told. Slow moving. Interesting topics. Slightly disappointing (but not bad) ending.
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