Forty years after its original publication, James Agee's last novel seems, more than ever, an American classic. For in his lyrical, sorrowful account of a man's death and its impact on his family, Agee painstakingly created a small world of domestic happiness and then showed how quickly and casually it could be destroyed.

On a sultry summer night in 1915, Jay Follet leaves his house in Knoxville, Tennessee, to tend to his father, whom he believes is dying. The summons turns out to be a false alarm, but on his way back to his family, Jay has a car accident and is killed instantly. Dancing back and forth in time and braiding the viewpoints of Jay's wife, brother, and young son, Rufus, Agee creates an overwhelmingly powerful novel of innocence, tenderness, and loss that should be read aloud for the sheer music of its prose.

James Agee was born in Tennessee in 1909 and graduated from Harvard University. His renowned study of Alabama sharecroppers during the Depression, 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men', appeared in 1941. Agee was known for his movie reviews and screenplays, and published a volume of poetry and a novella. He died in 1955, two years before his major work of fiction, A Death in the Family, was published and won the Pulitzer Prize.