Kind One

"This compact but reverberant 19th-century tale tracks a circle of hard-luck souls whose collective tears could fill a dry well . . . Hunt passes the narration among the principle characters in woozily nonlinear fashion, lending a range of textures to this antebellum melodrama."--"The New York Times Book Review ""Fiction Chronicle"" "["Kind One"] contains the sort of story that needs to be experienced directly . . . you should get a hold of a copy and read it for yourself as soon as you can."--Andrew Wille "There is always a surprise in the voice and in the heart of Laird Hunt's stories--with its echoes of habit caught in a timeless dialect, so we see the world he gives us as if new. 'You hear something like that and it walks out the door with you.'" --Michael Ondaatje "Laird Hunt's "Kind One," about two slave girls who take their white mistress into captivity, is a profound meditation on the sexual and racial subconscious of America. Nothing is sacred here. Savagery begets savagery. Women commit unspeakable violence, wives are complicit in their husband's crimes, slave girls learn to be as cold and brutal as the masters who have raped and whipped them. Of course the center cannot hold. We watch it crumble with breath held, skin tingling, in this gorgeous and terrifying novel." --Danzy Senna, author of "Caucasia" "Opening with a prologue in the form of an extraordinarily beautiful meditation on loss, Hunt's writing deepens into allegory, symbolism and metaphor, all while spinning forth a dark tale of abuse, incest and corruption reminiscent of Faulkner . . . Profoundly imaginative, strikingly original, deeply moving." --"Kirkus, "starred review "[A]n unforgettable tale of the savagery of antebellum America . . . Hunt deftly maintains an unsettling tone and a compelling narrative that will linger with readers long after the last page." --"Publishers Weekly" "Hunt is being recognized for his 2012 novel Kind One, a rich, pi