Child of God

Lester Ballard is a violent, solitary, and introverted young backwoodsman who has been systematically dispossessed of his ancestral land. Released from a local jail, he is left to haunt the isolated hill country of East Tennessee, gradually sinking deeper into the fringes of society while preying on the local population with his increasingly strange and destructive lusts.

Written by the author of the critically acclaimed Border Trilogy, this taut, chilling novel plumbs the absolute depths of human degradation. The narrative transforms commonplace brushes with humanity—occurring in rural homesteads, country stores, and the dense woods—into stunning scenes that balance the comic and the grotesque. As the story hurtles toward its unforgettable conclusion, it depicts the most sordid, transgressive aspects of life with a rare dignity, dark humor, and characteristic lyrical brilliance. Grounded in spare, precise, yet poetic prose, this haunting modern classic charts a terrible psychological decline, offering an uncompromising study of isolation and the fragile boundaries of human nature.