Child of God is a short novel set in rural Tennessee in the 1960s. It follows Lester Ballard, a violent and isolated man who has been driven from his home and lives in the hills, sinking further into disturbing behavior. The narrator describes him without easy judgment, and the book asks how far such a person remains part of the human family. It is dark and unsettling, relieved by flashes of black humor and sharp natural description, and it is a key work of the Southern gothic tradition.
Quotes
It's like a lot of things, said the smith. Do the least part of it wrong and ye'd just as well to do it all wrong. (p.71)
Given charge Ballard would have made things more orderly in the woods and in men's souls. (p.128)
Whatever voice spoke to him was no demon but some old shed self that came yet from time to time in the name of sanity, a hand to gentle him back from the rim of his disastrous wrath. (p.149)
In the spring or warmer weather when the snow thaws in the woods the tracks of winter reappear on slender pedestals and the snow reveals in palimpsest old buried wanderings, struggles, scenes of death. Tales of winter brought to light again like time turned back upon itself. (p.130)