In this magically evocative novel, William Maxwell explores the enigmatic gravity of the past, which compels us to keep explaining it even as it makes liars out of us every time we try. On a winter morning in the 1920s, a shot rings out on a farm in rural Illinois. A man named Lloyd Wilson has been killed. And the tenuous friendship between two lonely teenagers—one privileged yet neglected, the other a troubled farm boy—has been shattered.Fifty years later, one of those boys—now a grown man—tries to reconstruct the events that led up to the murder. In doing so, he is inevitably drawn back to his lost friend Cletus, who has the misfortune of being the son of Wilson's killer and who in the months before witnessed things that Maxwell's narrator can only guess at. Out of memory and imagination, the surmises of children and the destructive passions of their parents, Maxwell creates a luminous American classic of youth and loss.

威廉·麦克斯韦尔 (William Maxwell,1908-2000)

著名编辑、小说家、散文家、童书及传记作者，曾任职《纽约客》40载，是纳博科夫、厄普代克、塞林格等诸多美国当代重要作家的伯乐、知己与导师。著有包括《再见，明天见》在内的6部长篇小说，荣获美国国家图书奖、美国艺术与文学学院奖章、美国笔会/马拉穆德奖、马克· 吐温奖等。