Edisto and Edisto Revisited — Padgett Powell

A special two-in-one edition of National Book Award finalist Padgett Powell's acclaimed southern novels: Edisto and Edisto Revisited

In Edisto, Simons Everson Manigault is not a typical twelve-year-old boy in tiny Edisto, South Carolina, in the late 1960s. At the insistence of his challenging mother, who believes her son to possess a capacity for genius, Simons immerses himself in great literature and becomes as literate and literary as any English professor. When Taurus, a soft-spoken African American stranger, moves into the cabin recently vacated by the Manigaults' longtime maid, a friendship forms. The lonely, excitable Simons and the quiet, thoughtful Taurus, who has appointed himself Simons's guide in the ways of the grown-up world, bond over the course of a hot southern summer.

In Edisto Revisited, Simons Manigault is newly graduated from Clemson University, bored, unfocused, and idling his summer away at his mother's home in Edisto, South Carolina. Not yet ready to fully embrace adulthood, Simons finds himself surrendering to cynicism. To avoid sinking further into his rut, Simons embarks on a road trip through the South. After a disastrous stint as a Corpus Christi fisherman, he exits the Lone Star State, doubling back to the Louisiana bayou to spend some quality time with his former friend and mentor -- and his mother's ex-lover -- Taurus. But as even Taurus's once sought-after wisdom wears thin, Simons begins to suspect that the grass is not greener on the other side -- it may be burnt, brown, and dead wherever he goes.