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Before the First World War, Byron Aldridge led a charmed life as heir apparent to a Pennsylvania timber empire, but he returned from France a different man. He ends up working as a company policeman in a backwoods Louisiana sawmill, where violence seems the only way to keep control.
Here, amid the cypress swamps and alligators, his younger brother Randolph assumes charge of the mill and tries to rescue his former idol. As the brothers struggle 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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'Near-perfect ... untouchably good' Alan Warner, Daily Telegraph
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When Byron Aldridge, irrevocably traumatised from fighting in the Great War, flees his comfortable Pennsylvania life for a remote Louisiana sawmill, his brother Randolph immediately follows. But here, surrounded by cypress swamps and alligators, men lead lives of backbreaking toil relieved only by the whiskey, card games and girls offered by the local mafia. As the brothers struggle to understand each other and their wives contend with their own hopes and disappointments, the future begins to grow fearsome for them all.
'An extraordinary novel, one of the best I've read in years' Annie Proulx, Guardian
'The relationship between the two brothers is sensitively and brilliantly drawn; the strength of the women in the book, which is at odds with the harsh physicality of a land governed by violence, is deftly depicted ... The Clearing carries an emotional charge far beyond its pages and does what all great fiction does: gives insights allowing us to understand human nature and a distant time and place. I cannot recommend it highly enough.' Peter Straus, Literary Review
'This is a novel so firmly located and vividly realised that you can almost smell the Louisiana swampwater as you read ... 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.' Jem Poster, Guardian
'Compels you forward like a handcar on a downhill slope, until the final escape ... you read it in wonder.' Kent Haruf
'[An] excellent novel' John de Falbe, Spectator
'Damn fine ... a remarkable contribution to our sense of a land past and instincts remaining.' Ruth Hedges, List
'A marvelous evocation of time and place merges seamlessly with Gautreaux's powerful and timeless story.' William Gay
