BRET LOTT

Writing lays bare the soul. All serious writers know that each word reveals something significant about themselves, granting outsiders a glimpse at their most cherished beliefs and foundational convictions. In this series of intimate reflections on life and writing, critically acclaimed and best-selling novelist Bret Lott explores the authors craft through five letters covering a range of fascinating topics, from exploring the value of literary fiction to discussing the humility of Flannery OConnor. In the final and longest letter, Lott contemplates the death of his father and his struggle to convey his complicated thoughts and inexplicable emotions in words. Intensely personal and yet universally relatable, this powerful collection of essays will encourage and enrich writers and aspiring writers everywhere.

A sweeping and beautifully written (The New York Times Book Review) novel of how quickly a life can change; how, like lightning, an unforeseen event can set us on a course without reason or compass.In the backwoods of Mississippi, a land of honeysuckle and grapevine, Jewel and her husband, Leston, are truly blessed; they have five fine children. When Brenda Kay is born in 1943, Jewel gives thanks for a healthy baby, last-born and most welcome.In this story of a womans devotion to the child who is both her burden and Gods singular way of smiling on her, Bret Lott has created a mother-daughter relationship of matchless intensity and beauty, and one of the finest, most indomitable heroines in contemporary American fiction.

Bret Lotts powerful, insightful stories illuminate the everyday episodes that move us -- husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and neighhors -- along the intricate paths of intimacy. A little boys first bad dream brings his father back to his own childhood nights when danger lurked beneath the bed; in the California desert at night two brothers in a pickup tune into radio stations from distant places, interrupted by sudden bursts of static; estranged suburban friends become good neighbors again in the course of thwarting two thieves.Lotts previous novels, The Man Who Owned Vermont and A Strangers House, established him as "one of the strongest voices to come along in some time"(The San Francisco Chronicle).A Dream of Old Leaves stakes out his place in the landscape of new American fiction.

When Rick Wheelers wife walks out on him, he nearly drowns in despair. So the RC Cola salesman throws himself into work -- setting sales records, winning a promotion, burying himself in the lonely present while he scours the past for hope. Then at last on a cold Vermont morning, a hunter and his prey show him unexpectedly, haltingly, the way back to love and faith.

In this deeply affecting, beautifully crafted collection of short fiction, Bret Lott broadens his stylistic range, striking a surprisingly surreal tone with stark, hyperrealistic prose. As story after dazzling story deliberately takes you down a deceptively ordinary path, the arresting center of each startles your unsuspecting sensibility.Among the narrative gems is Family, in which a husband and wife bicker incessantly before realizing that their two children are missing, only to discover them in a surprising placeand in a disturbing condition. In Everything Cut Will Come Back, a long-distance phone call between two brothers takes a turn when their own tragic past crackles over the line. In History, a widow thinks she spots her son at the airport and is left instead with a simple memory of her late husband that resolves her grief. The innocence of three boys is lost when they witness a devastating winter tragedy in The Train, the Lake, the Bridge.Within these pages, adulterers are unceremoniously caught, epiphanies arrive during bizarre encounters, and characters move through everyday moments with a fortitude that elevates these stories almost to mythical status. Without a stroke of false sentimentality, The Difference Between Women and Men will leave you strangely shakenand ever aware of the odd permutations of humankind.

And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Ruth 1:16During a cold Massachusetts winter, a mans car fatally skids on black ice, leaving a mother childless and her daughter-in-law a widow. Naomi and Ruth, bound together as kin, are now each others only comfort. Naomi lost her own husband, Eli, eight years ago, and now she has lost her son.Watching Ruth struggle through grief, Naomi suddenly realizes what she must do to make herself whole again: She must return to her childhood home in coastal South Carolina. There, she remembers, was the innocence of youth and first falling in love. But when she tells Ruth about her plan, she receives an unexpected reply: Where you go, I will go. Where you live, thats where Ill live too. So the two women plan the journey together.The only family Naomi has down South are in-laws, people she hasnt seen in decades, having kept in touch over the years only through annual Christmas cards. But when she phones, apprehensively, to tell them of her plan, they welcome her with openness and warmth. Arriving at a home full of sons and daughters and grandchildren, Naomi and Ruth are flooded with a love they are nearly too fragile to accept.Yet Naomi carries a deep secret in her souland not even this change of scenery can erase its dark shadow. As the long Southern days seep into their hearts, both she and Ruth begin to find themselves reawakened. And as the love of her newfound family and her enduring bond with Ruth prove themselves stronger than sin, stronger than heartache, redemption finds Naomi once and for all.A Song I Knew by Heart is about the healing power of familyin particular, the bond between a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. As Ruth and Naomi share their individual sorrows, together they find an uncommon strength. The pages of Bret Lotts deeply moving novel flow with a lilting beauty that is as heartrending and as restorative as the relationship at its center.

It started with a body, the head of it pretty much gone, the hands skinned. We found it the Saturday after Thanksgiving, out to Hungry Neck Hunt Club. Uncle Leland owns the Hunt Club, which might make him sound important, or rich. But hes not.Huger Dillard is no ordinary fifteen-year-old from the Lowcountry of South Carolina. He may not have a father to help him grow up, but day-to-day guiding of his blind Uncle Leland--Unc, for short--and weekends spent at the Hunt Club have made him an expert on the habits of deer, the pompous attorneys and doctors of nearby Charleston, and the ways of the world. But with Uncs discovery of a mutilated body, Huger suddenly learns that he is expert at nothing--least of all his own life. Everything he knows and everyone he loves--Unc, his mother, his foundering teenage romance--is at risk, and Huger must use every ounce of resourcefulness and bravery to stay alive and protect what he believes in. Yet, when he finally discovers precisely what happened that Saturday morning, there is still one more secret to uncover, this one too dark, too deep, for him to even imagine.From Bret Lott, the critically acclaimed author the Los Angeles Times called "one of the most im-portant and imaginative writers in America today," The Hunt Club is a novel of deft pacing and remark-able detail, and a sultry evocation of a land and culture that has existed for generations but soon may be lost forever.

This marvelous guide begins where other books on writing and the writing life leave off. Delving deep into the creative process, Bret Lott reveals truths we scarcely realized we needed to know but without which we as writers will soon lose our way. In ten intimate essays based on his own experiences and on the seasoned wisdom of writers including Eudora Welty, E. B. White, Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, and John Gardner, Lott explores such topics as why write? why keep writing? the importance of simple words the finer points of character detail narrative and the passage of time the pitfalls of technique making a planand letting it go risking failureand reaping the benefits Accepting rejectionWriters travel alone, but Bret Lotts book makes the journey less lonely and infinitely more rewarding. Before We Get Started will help you make your work as good as it can be: Pay attention recklessly. Strain to see through the window of your own artistic consciousness in the exhilarating knowledge that there is no path to the waterfall, and there are a million paths to the waterfall, and there is, too, only one path: yours.

In this long-awaited sequel to The Hunt Club, set in the swampy South Carolina Lowcountry, New York Times bestselling author Bret Lott returns with a literary page-turner about murder and family secrets. Though Dead Low Tide continues the story of Huger Dillard, this haunting work of fiction brilliantly stands on its own. No longer a teenager and now a young man, Huger must come to terms with and confront the truth about his community, his past, and the mysterious place he calls home.While most of the residents in the wealthy, historic Charleston enclave of Landgrave Hall are asleep at two-thirty in the morning, Huger Dillard and his father, Unc, are heading, via jonboat, to the adjoining golf course. Blinded by a terrible accident that killed his wife, Unc prefers to practice his golf game when no one is watching. But before anyone can even tee off, Huger makes a grisly find: a womans body, anchored deep in the mud at the waters low tide. The discovery sets off a chain of events that puts Huger and his family up against secret military forces, old friends, longtime neighbors, lost loves, and shadowy global networks. The only thing connecting them all is Landgrave Halland the treacherous reason why this area is so important to so many people.

From the bestselling author of Jewel and The Difference Between Women and Men comes a haunting novel of home, family, and the pursuit of lost dreams. Ancient Highway brilliantly weaves together the hopes and regrets of three characters from three generations as they reconcile who they are and who they might have been.In 1925, a fourteen-year-old boy leaves his familys farm and hops a boxcar in a dusty Texas field, heading for Hollywood and a life in the flickers.In 1947, a ten-year-old girl aches for a real home with a real family in a wide-open space, far from the crowded Los Angeles streets where her handsome cowboy father chases stardom and her mother holds a secret.In 1980, a young man just out of the Navy visits his elderly yet colorful grandparents in Los Angeles, eager to uncover his familys silent history.For the Holmeses, a longing for something elseanother place, a second chanceseems to run in the family DNA. From Earls journey west toward Hollywood glory, to his daughter Joans wish for a normal existence away from the bright lights, to his grandson Brads yearning for truth, this deep-rooted desire sustains them, no matter how much the goal eludes them. But ultimately, in each generation, a family crisis forces a turning away from the horizon and the acceptance of a reality that is by turns harsh and healing.Inspired by stories of his own family, Bret Lott beautifully renders the lives of ordinary people with extraordinary faith in a mesmerizing and finely wrought tale of love and letting go.

For a long time, Claire and Tom Templeton have wished in vain for a child. What they have instead is a house, a charming old Cape that is their consolation. In the gray chill of a Massachusetts autumn, the Templetons and two local handymen, loners and eccentrics, work to rebuild the ramshackle home. As the house takes on a new life, Claire begins to understand its tangled history -- and to reconcile her own past and renew her hope for the future.

Hugh and Laura Walker could never have anticipated that the single greatest source of joy in their lives could so suddenly fill them with such unrelenting grief. The death of their only child, seven-year-old Michael -- struck by a car just seconds after stepping off his school bus -- has left them stranded in a sea of sorrow. With no emotional compass to guide them, the Walkers retreat to an old cottage near Cape May, New Jersey, where, separated from the daily reminders of their numbing loss, they hope to reenter the world of the living.But lurking just below their sanity and resolve are memories -- not only of the simple joy that Michael brought to their lives, but also of the horror of his fatal accident. Buffeted by the conflicting winds of mourning and renewal, the Walkers see the once-solid foundation of their marriage begin to loosen. And Laura harbors a secret -- one essential to her self-preservation, but which could destroy all she and Hugh have ever been to each other. Reeds Beach weaves domestic tragedy with a strikingly original thriller of the heart, revealing the truths hidden deep within each of us, while holding out the elusive promise of love and hope.