An Omnibus Edition of Three Classic Early Novels from the Critically Acclaimed Author of Cloudsplitter and AfflictionFamily Life: Russell Banks's first novel is an adult fairy tale of a royal family in a mythical contemporary kingdom where the myriad dramas of domesticity blend with an outrageous slew of murders, mayhem, coups, debauches, world tours, and love in all guises, transcendent or otherwise.Hamilton Stark: This tale of a solitary, boorish, misanthropic New Hampshire pipe fitter—the sole inhabitant of the house from which he evicted his own mother—is at once a compelling meditation on identity and a thoroughly engaging story of life on the cold edge of New England.The Relation of My Imprisonment: Utilizing a form invented by imprisoned seventeenth-century Puritan divines—an utterly sincere and detailed, if highly artificial, recounting of great suffering—Banks's novel is a remarkably inventive, lovingly good-humored argument, exploration, and map of the caged religious mind.
