The Clearing

Byron Aldridge, heir to a timber empire, returns from the First World War a changed man and finds refuge as a company policeman in a backwoods Louisiana sawmill. Soon his younger brother Randolph tracks him down, assuming charge of the mill in the hope of rescuing his former idol. But as the brothers try to understand each other and their wives contend with their own hopes and fears, it is Randolph who starts a feud with the Sicilians who control the whisky and girls, and the future grows fearsome for them all.

“'This is a novel so firmly located and vividly realised that you can almost smell the Louisiana swampwater ... a gripping, action-packed tale, but also a notably intelligent one, its powerful narrative drive counterbalanced and controlled by a meticulous attention to detail and a traditionalist's concern for depth and density'”

So firmly located and vividly realised that you can almost smell the Louisiana swampwater ... a gripping, action-packed tale, but also a notably intelligent one - Jem Poster, Guardian

Astonishingly powerful ... brilliantly written and the characters in their mire are superbly realised - Toby Clements, Daily Telegraph

An extraordinary novel, one of the best I've read in years - Annie Proulx, Guardian Summer Books

I cannot recommend it highly enough. - Peter Straus, Literary Review

Gautreaux captures the fetid atmosphere of a frontier society poised to join the modern world with great skill, each sentence polished to perfection - Independent on Sunday

Near-perfect ... untouchably good - Alan Warner, Daily Telegraph Summer Books

Born and raised in Louisiana, Tim Gautreaux lives there still with his family. His stories have been published in Harper's, the Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and Best American Short Stories, and collected in two volumes. Acclaimed as 'one of the best writers to have emerged in the 1990s' by Kirkus Reviews, his first novel, THE NEXT STEP IN THE DANCE, won the 1999 SEBA Book Award, and was followed in 2003 by the highly acclaimed THE CLEARING. In 2005, he was awarded the John Dos Passos Prize. His latest novel, THE MISSING, was published in 2009.

Byron Aldridge, heir to a timber empire, returns from the First World War a changed man and finds refuge as a company policeman in a backwoods Louisiana sawmill. Soon his younger brother Randolph tracks him down, assuming charge of the mill in the hope of rescuing his former idol. But as the brothers try to understand each other and their wives contend with their own hopes and fears, it is Randolph who starts a feud with the Sicilians who control the whisky and girls, and the future grows fearsome for them all.

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