The Valley of Light

Zusatztext "Lyrical, quiet, and melancholy....Hemingway never undertook a theme of such careful delicacy." Informationen zum Autor Terry Kay grew up in Royston, Georgia, in a family of 12 children. He was the author of 18 novels, including the international bestseller To Dance with the White Dog, which became the award-winning film starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. Kay passed away in December 2020 after a valiant battle with pancreatic cancer; his books will live on forever. Klappentext Award-winner Terry Kay is a Southern storyteller in the finest tradition, a novelist whose quiet power has earned him comparisons to the likes of Pat Conroy and John Steinbeck. "The Valley of Light" blends magic and realism into one man's journey back to himself in the years just after World War II. Leseprobe CHAPTER ONE He made his way to the lake watchfully, crossing the bulldozer-built dam that was covered in weed-grass across its ridge and in trash trees growing on the waterside. It was late afternoon. The sun was behind him, his shadow making a long ghost that wobbled over the weed-grass. Grasshoppers sailed away from his footsteps. At a clearing among the trash trees on the east end of the dam, he stopped and surveyed the ground. The lake had not been fished in a long time, he believed. Weed-grass grew high, with no look of being trampled. Left-behind bait cans were old and rusty. A coil of nylon line dangled like a spider's silk from a limb of one of the nearby trash trees, causing him to smile a smile that did not show on his face, knowing the spit of frustration the miscast had caused in some fisherman. A child's cast most likely. Not easy for a child to make a cast with nylon. Would be better to teach him with braided line. He thought about the fishermen who had abandoned the lake. Once, they had come to it from the logging road, he reasoned, bringing their families in wagons or trucks, chairs to sit on, fishing early to late with long bamboo poles and cork floats, eating their sausages and sardines and baked sweet potatoes, and at day's end taking home their stringers of bream and bass and catfish, muscle-weary, smelling of fish slime and worms. The water of the lake was the color of dark tea in the late-day shadows. Acid from trees. He closed his eyes, listened. The water lapped softly against the bank, rolled in, seeped back. The lapping sound was like a slow and lazy pulse beat. A dozing lake. Not much different from an old man sleeping in sunshine. Just enough breathing to keep alive. A good place. A good place. He wondered if it was the lake he had heard of. His sense told him it was. A hundred yards or so up the east side of the lake, he had seen a small frame building that seemed empty from his distant view, though it was hard to tell since it had a screened-in porch, the screen hiding whatever was behind it. Probably a shack used by hunters, he had reasoned, remembering such shacks from his childhood. If somebody lived in it full-time, they did a good job of making it appear deserted. Whoever it was that owned the lake and the shack had a good place. He squatted at the lake's edge, placing the fishing rod he carried on the ground, and then he leaned forward and lightly touched the palm of his hand on the surface of the water. Tell me, he said silently, said inside his mind. The water was cool. Against his palm it had a ticklish feel of silk. Yes, a good place. He pushed his fingers into the water and wiggled them, paused, let his eyes scan the lake. Forty feet away, against the bank, the water roiled, quivered like a muscle. He smiled again, held his fingers in the water, watched the roiling ripple toward him in perfect circles. Soon, the first ring touched him. He pulled his hand from the water and lifted it to his face and inhaled slowly, taking in the scents of the lake. Alg...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Terry Kay
• Editore: Washington Square Press
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 15.10.2004
• EAN: 9780743475952
• ISBN: 978-0-7434-7595-2
• Dimensioni: 135 mm x 210 mm x 18 mm
• Serie: Washington Square Press
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi