A Slant of Light

February 23, 2015
A double murder stirs old loyalties and resentments in Lent’s (In the Fall) atmospheric novel. Malcolm Hopeton, a soldier newly returned from the Civil War, finds himself betrayed by both his wife, Bethany, and Amos Wheeler, the hired man entrusted with his farm. Hopeton’s explosive rage leads him to kill them both, provoking a variety of responses within his western New York community: some incensed, others sympathetic. Harlan Davis, Hopeton’s teenage farmhand and the sole witness to the crime, desperately gathers information for the defense. A portrait of a community disoriented by war and grappling for meaning in Christian spiritualism, the novel conveys Malcolm’s struggles as a detailed miniature of the postwar American consciousness—his disaffection and self-examination, combined with a sense of betrayal from those he trusted most. Lent’s vivid description of the rural landscape calls to mind a Wyeth painting, and a surprising sensuality enlivens the characters’ interactions with the world and one another. The novel is slow going at times, and the characters’ seeming lack of memories of the war is puzzling; even Hopeton, clearly scarred by his experience, refers to it only in passing. Yet piece by subtle piece, the story deftly casts its spell.

Starred review from February 1, 2015
Another keening, moving novel steeped in American history and the rhythms of country life from Lent (After You've Gone, 2009, etc.).It opens with a scene of shocking violence, as Malcolm Hopeton confronts Amos Wheeler, the hired hand who plundered his farm and stole his wife, Bethany, while he was fighting in the Civil War. Hopeton kills Wheeler intentionally and Bethany by accident, injuring his young helper, Harlan Davis, who tries to stop him. Hopeton is arrested, and Harlan is taken to recuperate at the farm where his sister Becca keeps house for widower August Swartout. The complexities of relationships past and present in this small, tightly knit western New York community unfold as various powerful men maneuver to gain clemency for Hopeton as the justified avenger of marital betrayal. Though it becomes clear that Wheeler was evil to the bone and had physically abused Bethany, her own father stigmatizes her as a woman "raised in the grace of the Lord [who] turned away." The truth is a lot more complicated, we see, as Hopeton's memories of his early encounters with both Bethany and Wheeler suggest many unsavory secrets hidden among followers of the charismatic religion founded by the Public Friend (a female divine clearly modeled on the Shakers' Mother Ann Lee). Questions of faith, justice and forgiveness are palpable and pressing for Hopeton, August and Harlan, the trio whose consciousnesses dominate the narrative, although Lent gently sketches Bethany, Becca, and Wheeler's discarded lover, Alice Ann, from a further distance as women restless with their allotted roles. His prose is as magnificent as ever, capturing the light in a summer sky or the pain in a bereaved heart with equal clarity and beauty. The novel isn't so much resolved as halted by a closing scene that makes it clear none of these poignantly rendered characters has reached the ends of their journeys. More fine work from a writer who stirs both the head and the heart with powerful grace.

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November 15, 2014
From his 2000 debut, "In the Fall", a national best seller and "New York Times Book Review" Notable Book, to 2009's sometimes challenging "After You've Gone", Lent has offered darkly beautiful historicals with an unbending view of human nature. Here, bone-tired Malcolm Hopeton returns home from the Civil War to western New York, where he finds his farm a shambles and his wife and the hired hand gone. The subsequent double murder results in a trial that captures the divide between idyllic past and anxious future.

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