The Kept Lib/E
In the winter of 1897, Elspeth Howell treks across miles of snow and ice to the isolated farmstead in upstate New York where she and her husband have raised their five children. Her midwife's salary is tucked into the toes of her boots, and her pack is full of gifts for her family. But as she crests the final hill, and sees her darkened house and a smokeless chimney, immediately she knows that an unthinkable crime has destroyed the life she so carefully built.
Her lone comfort is her twelve-year-old son, Caleb, who joins her in mourning the tragedy and planning its reprisal. Their long journey leads them to a rough-hewn lake town, defined by the violence both of its landscape and of its inhabitants. There Caleb is forced into a brutal adulthood, as he slowly discovers truths about his family he never suspected, and Elspeth must confront the terrible urges and unceasing temptations that have haunted her for years. Throughout it all, the love between mother and son serves as the only shield against a merciless world.
A scorching portrait of guilt and lost innocence, atonement and retribution, resilience and sacrifice, pregnant obsession and primal adolescence, The Kept is told with deep compassion and startling originality, and introduces James Scott as a major new literary voice.
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James Scott is a former investigative reporter with The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina, where he was named Journalist of the Year in 2003 by the South Carolina Press Association. A 2007 Nieman Fellow for Journalism at Harvard University, Scott is the author of The Attack on the Liberty, which won the Samuel Eliot Morison Award. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.
The Kept starts out as a straightforward revenge narrative, then slowly deepens into something much more mysterious and compelling. James Scott has written a riveting and memorable debut novel.
-- "Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of The Leftovers"With its vivid sense of time and place, lyrical writing, and complex questions of what constitutes a family, The Kept is an outstanding debut by a bright new voice in American fiction.
-- "Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling author of The Cove"The Kept is both a thrilling adventure and a literary triumph. Following the journey of a mother and son who lose everything, only to find each other, James Scott's haunting tale will astonish and enchant you, the words echoing long after the final pages have turned.
-- "Hannah Tinti, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Thief"What a gripping storyteller James Scott is and what a dark and lyrical novel he has written. The Kept is a thrilling debut.
-- "Margot Livesey, New York Times bestselling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy"A deeply moving, disconcerting novel that showcases what a powerful and ambitious writer James Scott is.
-- "Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of The Family Fang"[An] accomplished debut...Scott has produced a work of historical fiction that is both atmospheric and memorable, suffused with dread and suspense right up to the last page.
-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review) "The Kept is a brutal and beautiful novel. Written with emotional ascendancy, these rock-ribbed characters illuminate loss, desire, and love. James Scott's debut is a celebration of bracing action, evocative rendering of the past, and literary precision.
-- "Julianna Baggott, author of Girl Talk and Pure"
