Hills Beyond (Revised) - (Voices of the South) by Thomas Wolfe (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The third and last book culled from the mountain of manuscript Thomas Wolfe left behind, The Hills Beyond "contains some of his best, and certainly his most mature, work" (New York Times Book Review). The unfinished novel from which this collection of sketches, stories, and novellas takes its title was Wolfe's final effort. It tells the story of the Joyner family, George Webber's maternal ancestors, in pre-Civil War North Carolina and illustrates Wolfe's fine sense of family traits rooted in a traceable past. "Chickamauga" is the superb Civil War tale that Wolfe received from his great-uncle; "The Lost Boy" renders a second, more tender, treatment of the death of young Grover Gant; and "The Return of the Prodigal" describes Eugene Gant's imagined and then actual revisit to Altamont when he is a famous author. Together the eleven pieces of The Hills Beyond confirm the passion, energy, and sensitivity that made Wolfe the most promising American writer of his generation.

Review Quotes

"Mature . . . dramatic . . . rhapsodic."-- "Saturday Review"

"Some of Wolfe's best work."-- "Time"

American literature will be enriched by this volume. Highly recommended.-- "Library Journal"

"Whether they were real or imagined, Wolfe could make his people live. . . . He had the power of evocation as only the best writers have--the magic touch that gives wings to a reader's thought. . . . The Hills Beyond would, I think, have surpassed in creative power those other four [novels] on which Wolfe's reputation must rest. . . . How great a pity that he did not live to finish it!"--J. Donald Adams "New York Times Book Review"

About the Author

Thomas Wolfe was born in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1900 and died of complications from pneumonia in 1938. Two of his novels, Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River, were published during his lifetime; and two, The Web and the Rock and You Can't Go Home Again, appeared posthumously.