William Gay's picaresque The 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.

Another powerfully unsettling novel by the master of the southern gothic, The Lost Country confirms William Gay's reputation as one of the most talented and prolific contemporary authors - in the south and beyond.