The Land Breakers (NYRB Classics)

The Land Breakers (NYRB Classics)

<p>Set deep in the Appalachian wilderness between the years of 1779 and 1784, <i>The Land Breakers</i> is a saga like the Norse sagas or the book of Genesis, a story of first and last things, of the violence of birth and death, of inescapable sacrifice and the faltering emergence of community. <br><br>Mooney and Imy Wright, twenty-one, former indentured servants, long habituated to backbreaking work but not long married, are traveling west. They arrive in a no-account settlement in North Carolina and, on impulse, part with all their savings to acquire a patch of land high in the mountains. With a little livestock and a handful of crude tools, they enter the mountain world—one of transcendent beauty and cruel necessity—and begin to make a world of their own.<br><br>Mooney and Imy are the first to confront an unsettled country that is sometimes paradise and sometimes hell. They will soon be followed by others. <br><br>John Ehle is a master of the American language. He has an ear for dialogue and an eye for nature and a grasp of character that have established <i>The Land Breakers</i> as one of the great fictional reckonings with the making of America.<br></p><br>