Critical Praise

"A majestic, vital, book. In the Fall seems absolutely true."

——The New York Times Book Review

"Lent is impressive in his storytelling…eloquent and articulate."

——Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"A book that will teach you about love, about death, about human nature and the stench of evil."

——The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

"In the Fall heralds the emergence of a fully formed writer, seemingly from nowhere."

——San Jose Mercury News

"Contains wisdom, gravity, beauty, horror and grace. I've never read a novel where race mattered so little and so much at the same time. It is a tribute to Lent's skill and insight that he negotiates this shifting ground with such facility, delivering a denouement."

——Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Lent takes the most calamitous period in American history and breathes sharp, vivid breath into it."

——The Baltimore Sun

"Finely observed and deeply felt. In the Fall is an absorbing novel and an auspicious debut."

——San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"A stunning success…builds like a thunderstorm over the horizon."

——The Christian Science Monitor

"There are passages that are written so beautifully that they take your breath away. A moving tale of three generations in an American family, their lives shaped by a secret buried in the last days of slavery."

——USA Today

"You can hear echoes of Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy in the prose. But the presiding geniuses of this dark novel's painterly, poetic scenes are Robert Frost and the artist Winslow Homer…flint-eyed Yankees who never saw a paradise that didn't have a snake."

——Newsweek