A local man killed her grandfather and brother for interfering in the affairs of slaveholders.įaulkner eventually draws all of these characters into the drama surrounding Joe Christmas, which accelerates to a harrowing climax. The two men live in an old slave cabin behind the house of Joanna Burden, an unmarried woman whose abolitionist family came to Jefferson decades before. He has taken up with a garrulous new arrival called Joe Brown, who sells the whiskey for him. The novel’s central figure is Joe Christmas, a drifter and bootlegger who has settled for a time in Jefferson. Haunted by a heroic vision of his great-grandfather who died in the Civil War, Hightower has forsaken his life to live in the unreal past.
At first sight, he falls in love with Lena.īunch’s friend, the Reverend Gail Hightower, is otherwise completely friendless in the community where he has lived for years. There she finds the similarly named Byron Bunch, a man who has sought to keep himself free from sin by filling his life with work and churchgoing. Having waited for six months without a word, she sets out on foot to find him and arrives, eight months pregnant, at the town of Jefferson, Mississippi.
Burch has gone away, supposedly to look for work, promising to send for her. Lena Grove, orphaned as a young girl and living with her brother’s family, becomes pregnant by a man named Lucas Burch. Light in August interweaves the stories of several major characters.
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