Introduction

From Donald Ray Pollock, author of the highly acclaimed The Devil All the Time and Knockemstiff, comes a dark, gritty, electrifying (and, disturbingly, weirdly funny) new novel that will solidify his place among the best contemporary American authors.

It is 1917, in that sliver of border land that divides Georgia from Alabama. Dispossessed farmer Pearl Jewett ekes out a hardscrabble existence with his three young sons: Cane (the eldest; handsome; intelligent); Cob (short; heavy set; a bit slow); and Chimney (the youngest; thin; ill-tempered). Several hundred miles away in southern Ohio, a farmer by the name of Ellsworth Fiddler lives with his son, Eddie, and his wife, Eula. After Ellsworth is swindled out of his family's entire fortune, his life is put on a surprising, unforgettable, and violent trajectory that will directly lead him to cross paths with the Jewetts. No good can come of it. Or can it?

In the gothic tradition of Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy with a healthy dose of cinematic violence reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah, Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, the Jewetts and the Fiddlers will find their lives colliding in increasingly dark and horrific ways, placing Donald Ray Pollock firmly in the company of the genre's literary masters.

Editorial Review

An Amazon Best Book of July 2016: There’s really nobody like Donald Ray Pollock. With a name that sounds like a serial killer’s and style to match, he came to the writing game late, publishing the grimly funny and occasionally shocking collection, Knockemstiff, on the windward side of his 50th birthday. The Devil All the Time, another dark ramble through backwoods Ohio, followed, this time expanding his grimy gothic into a fully realized novel. And with his latest, Pollock is neither slowing down nor pulling back. The Heavenly Table splits the tale between two camps: On one side are Cane, Cobb, and Chimney, three brothers of varying dimness suddenly turned loose--at the death of their pious father--to fulfill their kindred potential for violence and larceny. On the other are Ellsworth and Eula Fiddler, increasingly desperate to maintain their farm after losing their "fortune" to a painfully obvious swindle. Suffice to say, Pollock winds up his doomed characters and sets them in motion in a pulpy, peripatetic trajectories in each other's direction. If you're the kind of reader who assesses a book by how well you like its characters, this book probably isn't for you; the best reason to read The Heavenly Table is to witness a writer constantly pushing the borders of imagination--and often propriety--while daring his readers to reassess their own.--Jon Foro, The Amazon Book Review

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