"The Blood
of Paradise is suffused with a radiance only rarely bestowed upon the incidents
of ofdinary life." -New York Times
A lucid, persuasive,
self-aware work of pastoral reealism, centering on a thoroughly modern young
family's struggle to homestead, for aesthetic reasons, in Virginia's Appalachain
Mountains." -Village Voice
STEPHEN GOODWIN'S second
novel is an emblematic tale of the sixties, of a sophisticated couple going
back to the land. The restlessness that compels Anna and Steadman to move from
the city to a small mountain farm in Virginia is brought into high relief by
the cycles of the natural world, and by the arrival of Anna's demonic twin sister.
Goodwin's prose, by turns stark and pastoral, outlines these struggles while
leavening them with self-effacing humor and beauty. Peopled with hippies and
mountain folk, artists and farmers both organic and traditional, not to mention
an unforgettable child, The Blood of Paradise evokes an era through a sensitive
and unstinting portrait of marriage.