Lent, Jeffrey

PERSONAL: Born in Pomfret, VT; married; wife’s name Marion; children: two daughters. Education: Attended Franconia College and the College at Purchase.

ADDRESSES: Home—Tunbridge, VT.

CAREER: Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS: In the Fall and Lost Nation were Book-of-the-Month Club main selections.

WRITINGS:

In the Fall (novel), Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Lost Nation (novel), Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 2002.

A Peculiar Grace (novel), Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 2007.

ADAPTATIONS: In the Fall was adapted for audio (abridged; four cassettes), Harper-Audio, 2000.

SIDELIGHTS: Jeffrey Lent’s understanding of the culture of New England, as well as his own farming heritage and rural Vermont childhood, are evident in his debut novel, In the Fall. Newsweek contributor Malcolm Jones wrote that “you can hear echoes of Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy in Lent’s prose. But the presiding geniuses of this dark novel’s painterly, poetic scenes are Robert Frost and the artist Winslow Homer, great outdoorsmen and lovers of the land, but also flint-eyed Yankees who never saw a paradise that didn’t have a snake.”

The years Lent and his wife spent in North Carolina while he produced unpublished manuscripts also enabled him to write of the South, where Vermont native Norman Pelham finds his bride, Leah Mebane, an escaped slave who saves his life as he fights in the American Civil War. Pelham takes Leah to Vermont to live an isolated existence. She bears two daughters, who never marry, and one son, Jamie. As a young man, Jamie flees to New Hampshire, where he passes as white and makes a living as a bootlegger. Jamie’s son, Foster, eventually travels South to learn the truth about his heritage and the reason his grandmother hanged herself.

George de Man wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the novel “shares all the strengths of any novel concerned with America’s racial obsession, and the weaknesses of many family sagas. Lent’s fatalistic insight—that the legacy of slavery reaches, like an unseen hand, down the generations—stalks his narrative with the tenacity of original sin.” Booklist writer Grace Fill commented that, “loamy and visceral, Lent’s writing is deeply introspective, intelligent, and beautifully descriptive.” New York Times Book Review contributor Tony Earley called In the Fall “a majestic, vital book.”

In reviewing Lent’s second novel, Lost Nation, in the Weekly Standard, David Skinner said that the book’s “subject is the American soul, Christian and savage at the same time, noble but also tragic, on the brink of civilization but prone to monstrousness even in the presence of a governing body.” The main character is Blood, a middle-aged man with a dark secret whose only friend is his dog, Luther. As the story opens in the 1830s, Blood is heading for Indian Stream, an area on the border of New Hampshire and Canada that has declared its independence. In the back of his ox-drawn wagon, along with rum, weapons, and other goods, is tied sixteen-year-old Sally, a girl he won from her mother in a card game. The uneducated Sally has been a prostitute since she was a girl. In spite of her deprivation, she has a happy spirit that lightens Blood’s outlook, and although he uses her for precisely the same purpose, pimping her from a tavern he buys, life is better for her than it had been with her mother. Sally, who dreams of freedom, learns to garden and begins to save money.

“As Sally waits,” wrote Nick Owchar in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, “Lent depicts the difficult violent circumstances of life on the frontier and an ominous series of clashes with Canadian and American magistrates, who vie for the disputed territory…. Lent is a skillful and confident storyteller, evoking the seasons, the dampness of the bogs and the muck and the madness that sometimes affects those living alone in the dark woods.” Georgia Jones-Davis, writing in the Washington Post Book World, noted that “Lent writes muscular prose and builds complex characters who move through his plot in ways that deftly demonstrate their strengths and weaknesses.”

A Peculiar Grace tells the story of Hewitt Pearce, a blacksmith who keeps to himself, until the day that a young woman named Jessica drives her Volkswagen Beetle onto his property in the middle of the night and runs out of gas. On her way to Texas, she is out of money as well as gas and strikes Hewitt as confused but somehow intriguing. He ultimately talks her into staying for a while, and after an initial period of discord caused by their greatly varying habits, the two settle into a tentative friendship and begin to learn each other’s secrets. Donna Seaman remarked in Booklist that “Lent has forged a many-faceted plot, vital characters, convincing psychology, and finely articulated spiritual musings.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly felt that this book differed from Lent’s earlier offerings, but concluded that A Peculiar Grace is “no less magisterial and every bit as beautifully written.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, George de Man, review of In the Fall, p. L13.

Booklist, February 15, 2000, Grace Fill, review of In the Fall, p. 1081; May 1, 2002, Keir Graff, review of Lost Nation, p. 1508; July 1, 2007, Donna Seaman, review of A Peculiar Grace, p. 30.

Boston Globe, April 30, 2002, Michael Kenney, “Exploring the Dark Frontier of a ‘Lost Nation,’” p. E2.

Christian Science Monitor, April 6, 2000, Ron Charles, “Climbing the Family Tree through a Ticket of Slavery,” review of In the Fall, p. 16; May 2, 2002, Ron Charles, “No Land, No Home, No Refuge from Pain,” review of Lost Nation, p. 15.

Denver Post, June 4, 2000, James Lough, “‘We Can’t Ever Learn’: Civil War Ushers in a Family Saga,” review of In the Fall, p. El.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2007, review of A Peculiar Grace.

Library Journal, February 15, 2000, David A. Berona, review of In the Fall, p. 197; April 1, 2002, David W. Henderson, review of Lost Nation, p. 141.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 7, 2000, Henry Mayer, “The Bad Seed,” review of In the Fall, p. 4; June 2, 2002, Nick Owchar, “Starting Over,”review of Lost Nation, p. R11.

Newsweek, April 10, 2000, Malcolm Jones, “Dark Tale, Bright Future: Jeffrey Lent Debuts with an Epic American Saga,” p. 74.

New York Times Book Review, April 30, 2000, Tony Earley, “The Long Walk Home,” review of In the Fall, p.12; June 9, 2002, Will Blythe, review of Lost Nation, p. 13.

Publishers Weekly, February 21, 2000, review of In the Fall, p. 61; March 18, 2002, review of Lost Nation, p. 74; April 2, 2007, review of A Peculiar Grace, p. 31.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 26, 2002, Martin North-way, “Hardscrabble Prose Matches Harsh Life Spelled out in New Hampshire Motto,” review of Lost Nation, p. F10.

Times Literary Supplement, September 22, 2000, Wendy Brandmark, “The Baby of the Family,” review of In the Fall, p. 23.

Washington Post Book World, May 19, 2002, Georgia Jones-Davis, “Blood Simple,” review of Lost Nation, p. T3.

Weekly Standard, August 5, 2002, David Skinner, review of Lost Nation, p. 42.

ONLINE

Bear Pond Books Web site,http://www.bearpondbooks.com/ (May 13, 2005), brief biography of Jeffrey Lent.

Houston Chronicle Online,http://www.houstonchronicle.com/ (June 16, 2002), Rich Quackenbush,“New Novel Reaffirms Lent’s Early Praise,”review of Lost Nation.*