Soldiers’ Pay

Faulkner’s first novel, published in 1926, follows a badly wounded aviator home from the Great War to a small Georgia town that no longer knows what to do with him. Donald Mahon returns scarred, half-blind, and slipping toward death, and his arrival unsettles the fiancee who waited, the family who idealized him, and a community eager to move on. Around him Faulkner gathers a restless cast of veterans, flirts, and drifters caught in the letdown that followed the armistice. The writing is lush and sometimes uneven, an ambitious young author finding his voice before Yoknapatawpha, yet the disillusionment and wasted youth cut deep. It offers an early look at themes he would later master. Read it here as a free PDF and EPUB edition.