Showing results for "Country" in Noir

There are sharps and flats. Majors and minors. And then there’s the sound of a Top 10 hit. That sound. It shouldn’t be so, of course. A song is, after all, a simple thing. At its heart, it’s just a collection of verses and choruses, maybe a bridge to stir things up and tie it all together. A few chords with a solo thrown into the middle. That’s all there is to it. And yet, for an art form that’s ruled by and relies upon mathematical patterns, there is still an unquantifiable quality that defies reason.

Billy Edgewater is a harbinger of doom. Estranged from his family, discharged from the navy and touched by a rising desperation, he sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying. On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D. L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are.

The Lost Country centers on Edgewater, who's recently been discharged from the navy, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish who takes him under his wing as they both search desperately for a forgotten past and a future that may never come. The Lost Country cements Gay as one of the strongest voices in Southern literature, alongside Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner.