Book Review: In The Fall By Jeffrey Lent

In the Fall, Jeffrey Lent’s debut novel, follows the course of the Pelham family across three generations. It is an addictive tale, one that draws readers in and fosters within them a deep affinity for the characters and their lives. It may best be described as a humble novel—but one with epic grandeur.

Leah Mebane is a young slave girl on the run from her master’s home in Sweetboro, North Carolina at the end of the civil war. On her way north she meets Norman Pelham, a wounded Union soldier whom she nurses back to health. A meeting that can almost be described as love at first sight, Norman brings Leah home to his family’s farm in Vermont as his bride. Their love and devotion to one another is played out for many years despite the prejudice surrounding the contrasting colors of their skin. But even though their marriage is a happy one, a marriage which has been blessed with three children, the terrible secret which Leah could not outrun beckons her south once again—and what she finds in Sweetboro those many years later is her undoing.

Jamie Pelham is a troubled young man raised under the umbrella of his stoic father Norman and his two elder sisters Prudence and Abigail. Restless with life on the Vermont farm where he grew up, he heads out to face the world in search of something … else. His journey takes him to Bethlehem where the color of his skin may be taken for any one of the many ethnic groups fighting to survive on those mean streets. There, he meets Joey, a French Canadian singer with whom he falls in love and eventually marries. Their relationship, though a stormy one, survives the test of time—until an unforeseen tragedy leaves Jamie on his own to care for himself and his first-born son.

Foster Pelham does not remember his mother and his younger sister. The life he knows involves only his father and the bootlegging trade he brought with him from Bethlehem. But when that trade is the cause of his father’s violent end, Foster is drawn to the Vermont farm and the family of Pelhams he never knew. And learning of his grandmother Leah, he follows her trail to Sweetboro, North Carolina to lay to rest the secret that broke her, and which affected the lives of the generations of Pelhams since.

Jeffrey Lent’s literary talent is unquestionable. His prose is crafted much like an artist paints a picture – each word a stroke of colour, deliberately placed. His characters are the result of deep reflection, as real as any live person. When each one leaves the story, there is left behind in the reader a true sense of loss. Lent’s cadence is deliberate—at times, even blissfully lazy. But a word of warning to the reader: he or she must have an appreciation for language for no other reason than itself. This is not the novel for one who desires swift resolution to the plot—without an appreciation of literary mastery, the reader might find that the story drags quite a bit. But for the reader who loves words, who loves the way words can be structured and rearranged and artfully compiled, In the Fall is the perfect novel—engaging, beautifully written, and eternally haunting.