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Synopsis
“Gautreaux, like some Bayou Conrad, manages to combine verbal luxuriance and swift, brutal action to devastating effect.” —The New Yorker
The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of The Clearing, Tim Gautreaux’s powerful story of a mill town steeped in violence in the aftermath of WWI.
The New Yorker
In the years just after the First World War, two brothers find themselves beset by rains, vipers, and gangsters. Randolph, the younger and stodgier of the two, has been sent by their father, a censorious Pittsburgh timber baron, to track down Byron, the family favorite. Byron turns up in a sawmill sunk in the middle of a rank Louisiana swamp, but his experiences in the war have changed him from a swashbuckling rogue into a half-mad, sentimental thug, whose only pleasure is listening to scratchy ballads on a dilapidated Victrola. Randolph soon becomes enmeshed in his brother's violent world, and Gautreaux, like some Bayou Conrad, manages to combine verbal luxuriance and swift, brutal action to devastating effect.