The wild palms

In this feverishly beautiful novel-originally titled If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem-William Faulkner interweaves two narratives, each wholly absorbing in its own right, each subtly illuminating the other. In New Orleans in 1937, a man and a woman embark on a headlong flight into the wilderness of illicit passion, fleeing her husband and the temptations of respect- ability. In Mississippi ten years earlier, a convict sets forth across a flooded river, risking his one chance at freedom to rescue a pregnant woman. From these separate stories, Faulkner composes a symphony of deliverances and damnation, survival and self-sacrifice.