A stunning, heart-breaking literary debut with the feel of a big American classic.

'A brilliant debut.' Jenni Fagan, author of The Panopticon

'A novel this good is a rare thing.' David Gilbert, author of & Sons

'[A] vivid update on Southern Gothic.' Matthew Thomas, author of We Are Not Ourselves

Just before Henry Aster's birth, his father, a frustrated novelist and lawyer, reluctantly returns to the remote North Carolina mountains where he was raised and installs his young family in a gothic mansion worthy of his hero Edgar Allan Poe. There, Henry grows up in the shadow of this fierce and brilliant man. But when a death in the family tips his father toward a fearsome unravelling, what was once a young son's reverence is poisoned, and Henry flees, not to return until years later when his family and the Barrowfields call him home.

Mesmeric in its prose and mythic in its sweep, The Barrowfields is an extraordinary debut about the darker side of devotion, the limits of forgiveness, and the reparative power of shared pasts.

[Twitter symbol] @EKHornbeck

In his evocative debut about disenchantment and identity, Lewis captures the longing of a southerner separated from his home, his family, and his ambition... Like fellow North Carolinian Thomas Wolfe, Lewis tackles the conflicting choice between accepting one's roots and rejecting the past, and he does so with grace, wit, and an observant eye.