A novel set in a Mississippi town, where several lives cross over a few summer weeks. Lena Grove, a young pregnant woman, travels on foot in search of the father of her child. In the same town live Joe Christmas, a solitary man whose uncertain origins leave him an outsider, and Reverend Gail Hightower, a disgraced minister haunted by the past. Faulkner explores isolation, identity, religion and racial prejudice with compassion and force. It is among his most humane and approachable large novels.
Quotes
Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what the other man or woman is doing.
Even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as an honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.
... ingenuity was apparently given man in order that he may supply himself in crisis with shapes and sounds with which to guard himself from truth.