The Lost Country — William Gay

William Gay's picaresque Lost Country follows four people on the road: a young sailor hitchhiking to Tennessee from the West Coast, a one-armed con-man, a kid dodging the law, and an enigmatic young woman who has fled her sordid and abusive home life. Everybody's looking for something - redemption, revenge, a moment of grace - and their separate paths will eventually intersect in the town of Ackerman's Field, where these four disparate storylines will be inextricably drawn together.