New York, NY: Farrar Straus & Giroux. (2009)

First Edition. Signed.

Very good in dust jacket. The book is in fine condition. The fragile dust jacket of gold foil tends to peel and chip. Author's first novel.


One summer, a young woman travels to the isolated tobacco farm her lover has inherited after his family dies in an accident. As Orren works to save the farm from drought, Aloma struggles with the loneliness of farm life and tries to find her way in a combative, erotically charged relationship with a grieving, taciturn man. A budding friendship with a handsome and dynamic young preacher further complicates her growing sense of dissatisfaction.

As she considers whether to stay with Orren or to leave, she grapples with the finality of loss and death and the eternal question of whether it is better to fight for freedom or to submit to love. All the Living has the timeless quality of a parable, but it is also a perfect evocation of a time and place, a portrait of both age-old conflicts and modern life. It is an ode to the starve-acre Southern farm, the mountain landscape, and difficult love.

In her lyrical and moving debut novel, C. E. Morgan recalls both the serenity of Marilynne Robinson and the shifting emotional currents of James Salter.