Look Homeward, Angel

Thomas Wolfe’s first novel, published in 1929, is a sprawling, autobiographical account of a young man’s coming of age in the American South. Eugene Gant grows up in the fictional mountain town of Altamont, the youngest child of a stonecutter father given to drink and grand oratory and a mother consumed by property and thrift. Wolfe traces Eugene’s childhood, his hungry reading, his first loves, and his slow, aching separation from a family that both smothers and shapes him. The prose runs to torrents of feeling and dense Southern detail, and the book so closely mirrored Wolfe’s own Asheville upbringing that it scandalized the town for years. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.