This is the tale of three generations of an American family, the dark secrets at its core, and the forbidden transcendent love affairs that fuel the characters over the course of six decades, from the Civil War to the edge of the Great Depression. Spanning the post-Civil War era to the edge of the Great Depression, In the Fall is an extraordinary epic of three generations of an American family, the dark secrets that blister at its core, and the transcendent bonds between men and women that fuel their lives over the course of six decades.In the twilight of the Civil War, a Union soldier named Norman Pelham is found battle-wounded and near death by Leah, a slave running from a different hell. After Leah nurses him back to health, Norman brings her to his family homestead in Vermont as his wife, and there they begin a family that will be shaped by their passionate devotion to each other and its consequences. 'Placing Lent alongside respected contemporaries such as Charles Frazier and David Guterson, In the Fall is an ambitious, dramatic and sweeping book filled with humanity and crafted thought, even as it touches on the most disturbing and desperate of themes' The Times