Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
“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, author of The Leftovers
Review
“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, author of Nothing Gold Can Stay
Review
“The Kept is a deeply moving, disconcerting novel…Scott manages something quite difficult here, balancing both terror and tenderness with apparent ease. By the end of the book, you'll be convinced that he can do just about anything.” Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang
Review
“Scott is both compassionate moralist and master storyteller in this outstanding debut.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Review
“The author has crafted a laudable, compelling, tightly woven tale with memorable characters. Scott writes with an eloquence that urges the reader to return to passages and reread them just to admire his superb skill. Highly recommended.” Library Journal (starred review)
Review
“Scott's first novel epitomizes whats great in this renaissance [of literary Westerns]: economy of dialogue; unsparing realism; the giddiness and terror induced by the knowledge of liberty.” Maclean's
Review
“A vivid, violent, beautiful book....At turns tender and harsh, twisted and lyrical.” Interview
Review
“Half beautiful, half disturbing, [James Scott's lyrical images] decorate The Kept like frescoes in a crumbling cathedral….Feels like the shell of a Cormac McCarthy novel filled with the intricate yearning and familial strife of a Lorca play….A gripping combination.” The Rumpus
Review
“Dark and mysterious….A novel whose daring is found in its bleakness….The plot unfolds with a weighty languor reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy…sparse, elegant…haunting.” New York Times
Review
“Scott is a master of mood….This landscape is more mythic than historic, and Scott's characters are dark brush strokes of appetite and deceit. His central concern, as a storyteller, is the dynamic of consequence.” New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
Set in rural New York state at the turn of the twentieth century, superb new talent James Scott makes his literary debut with
The Kept — a propulsive novel reminiscent of the works of Michael Ondaatje, Cormac McCarthy, and Bonnie Jo Campbell, in which a mother and her young son embark on a quest to avenge a terrible and violent tragedy that has shattered their secluded family.
In the winter of 1897, a trio of killers descends upon an isolated farm in upstate New York. Midwife Elspeth Howell returns home to the carnage: her husband, and four of her children, murdered. Before she can discover her remaining son Caleb, alive and hiding in the kitchen pantry, another shot rings out over the snow-covered valley. Twelve-year-old Caleb must tend to his mother until she recovers enough for them to take to the frozen wilderness in search of the men responsible.
A scorching portrait of a merciless world — of guilt and lost innocence, atonement and retribution, resilience and sacrifice, pregnant obsession and primal adolescence — The Kept introduces an old-beyond-his-years protagonist as indelible and heartbreaking as Mattie Ross of True Grit or Jimmy Blevins of All the Pretty Horses, as well as a shape-shifting mother as enigmatic and mysterious as a character drawn by Russell Banks or Marilynne Robinson.
About the Author
James Scott was born in Boston and grew up in upstate New York. He holds a BA from Middlebury College and an MFA from Emerson College. His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, American Short Fiction, and other publications. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and dog. The Kept is his first novel.