The Kept: A Novel

by James Scott

Overview

“Dark and mysterious. . . . A novel whose daring is found in its bleakness. . . . The plot unfolds with a weighty languor reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy. . . sparse, elegant. . . haunting.” — New York Times

Set in rural New York state at the turn of the twentieth century, superb new talent James Scott makes his literary debut with The Kept—a propulsive novel reminiscent of the works of Michael Ondaatje, Cormac McCarthy, and Bonnie Jo Campbell, in which a mother and her young son embark on a quest to avenge a terrible and violent tragedy that has shattered their secluded family.

In the winter of 1897, a trio of killers descends upon an isolated farm in upstate New York. Midwife Elspeth Howell returns home to the carnage: her husband, and four of her children, murdered. Before she can discover her remaining son Caleb, alive and hiding in the kitchen pantry, another shot rings out over the snow-covered valley. Twelve-year-old Caleb must tend to his mother until she recovers enough for them to take to the frozen wilderness in search of the men responsible.

A scorching portrait of a merciless world—of guilt and lost innocence, atonement and retribution, resilience and sacrifice, pregnant obsession and primal adolescence—The Kept introduces an old-beyond-his-years protagonist as indelible and heartbreaking as Mattie Ross of True Grit or Jimmy Blevins of All the Pretty Horses, as well as a shape-shifting mother as enigmatic and mysterious as a character drawn by Russell Banks or Marilynne Robinson. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062236654
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/06/2015
Series:	P.S. Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	682,046
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

James Scott was born in Boston and grew up in upstate New York. He holds a BA from Middlebury College and an MFA from Emerson College. His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, American Short Fiction, and other publications. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and dog. The Kept is his first novel.

Editorial Reviews

[A] bravura debut....It is a testament to the author’s artisan-like control that he is able to tease us with Elspeth’s crimes from the outset and yet keep the terrible measure of her dereliction at bay until the final clinch, as breathless as it is inevitable.

Boston Globe

Quite an impressive debut novel…James Scott’s descriptions of nature and his ability to reveal two complex, tormented people are what make the book live and even sing, albeit a mournful, heartbroken music.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

With its vivid sense of time and place, lyrical writing, and complex questions of what constitutes a family, The Kept is an outstanding debut by a bright new voice in American fiction.

Ron Rash

The Kept is a brutal and beautiful novel. Written with emotional ascendancy, these rock-ribbed characters illuminate loss, desire, and love. James Scott’s debut is a celebration of bracing action, evocative rendering of the past, and literary precision.

Julianna Baggott

The Kept starts out as a straightforward revenge narrative, then slowly deepens into something much more mysterious and compelling. James Scott has written a riveting and memorable debut novel.

Tom Perrotta

Graceful…unsettling…The Kept is a novel where most everyone harbors dark secrets and most characters are not who they appear to be.

USA Today

Half beautiful, half disturbing, [James Scott’s lyrical images] decorate The Kept like frescoes in a crumbling cathedral…Feels like the shell of a Cormac McCarthy novel filled with the intricate yearning and familial strife of a Lorca play…A gripping combination.

The Rumpus

What a gripping story teller James Scott is and what a dark and lyrical novel he has written. The Kept is a thrilling debut

Margot Livesey

Graceful…unsettling…The Kept is a novel where most everyone harbors dark secrets and most characters are not who they appear to be.

USA Today

Scott is a master of mood…and Scott's characters are dark brush strokes of appetite and deceit. His central concern, as a storyteller, is the dynamic of consequence. People, in this novel, are the sum of their emotional failures…The Kept is gothic in both structure and atmosphere. Violence comes swiftly, with no warning. The strong are without sentiment. The weak retain nothing but shards of their remembered affections. No family is whole. No love can be complete.

The New York Times Book Review - Alyson Hagy

If not for the author's sparse, elegant prose, twanged with puritanical patois, The Kept might be simply agonizing. Instead, it is a haunting narrative, salvaged by precise language that never overreaches or oversells. Although there are moments when Mr. Scott might have gone lighter on excruciating details—a finger probing a bullet wound, the radiating agony of a cracked fingernail, a body brutally crushed under a block of ice—for the most part, his restraint is an excellent foil for the moral and physical desolation of his story and characters.

The New York Times - Ivy Pochoda

★ 11/11/2013
Scott’s accomplished debut—a dark, brooding tale set in upstate New York in the late 19th century—follows a compulsive midwife who must deal with the tragic consequences of her actions in order to form a family. As Elspeth Howell, mother of five, tromps through a blizzard to return home after weeks spent performing her duties, she finds a grisly bloodbath: her Native American husband, Jorah, and four children have been murdered. Only middle son Caleb, 12, survives. Startled while hiding in the pantry, the boy accidentally shoots his mother. Elspeth survives both this event and the flames that decimate the cabin after Caleb attempts to gruesomely burn the stacked bodies of his family members. The novel dips briskly back in time to reveal that Elspeth’s children were all abducted as infants from other households, since she is unable to conceive children of her own. The price of these crimes manifests itself in the tragedies she now faces. Elspeth and Caleb decide to track down the killers, and this expansive search, steeped in Elspeth’s need for revenge and Caleb’s search for his true lineage, expands the breadth of Scott’s novel and forces mother and son to adopt new identities in distant locales. Together, they face a host of angry villains, any of which could’ve been responsible for the executions. Scott has produced a work of historical fiction that is both atmospheric and memorable, suffused with dread and suspense right up to the last page. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

“Scott is a master of mood… This landscape is more mythic than historic, and Scott’s characters are dark brush strokes of appetite and deceit. His central concern, as a storyteller, is the dynamic of consequence.” — New York Times Book Review

“[A] bravura debut....It is a testament to the author’s artisan-like control that he is able to tease us with Elspeth’s crimes from the outset and yet keep the terrible measure of her dereliction at bay until the final clinch, as breathless as it is inevitable.” — Boston Globe

“Graceful…unsettling…The Kept is a novel where most everyone harbors dark secrets and most characters are not who they appear to be.” — USA Today

“Dark and mysterious… A novel whose daring is found in its bleakness… The plot unfolds with a weighty languor reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy… sparse, elegant… haunting.” — New York Times

“Quite an impressive debut novel…James Scott’s descriptions of nature and his ability to reveal two complex, tormented people are what make the book live and even sing, albeit a mournful, heartbroken music.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

“The Kept starts out as a straightforward revenge narrative, then slowly deepens into something much more mysterious and compelling. James Scott has written a riveting and memorable debut novel.” — Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers

“With its vivid sense of time and place, lyrical writing, and complex questions of what constitutes a family, The Kept is an outstanding debut by a bright new voice in American fiction.” — Ron Rash, author of Nothing Gold Can Stay

“The Kept is a deeply moving, disconcerting novel… Scott manages something quite difficult here, balancing both terror and tenderness with apparent ease. By the end of the book, you’ll be convinced that he can do just about anything.” — Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang

“The Kept is a brutal and beautiful novel. Written with emotional ascendancy, these rock-ribbed characters illuminate loss, desire, and love. James Scott’s debut is a celebration of bracing action, evocative rendering of the past, and literary precision.” — Julianna Baggott, author of Girl Talk and Pure

“The Kept is both a thrilling adventure and a literary triumph. Following the journey of a mother and son who lose everything, only to find each other, James Scott’s haunting tale will astonish and enchant you, the words echoing long after the final pages have turned.” — Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief

“What a gripping story teller James Scott is and what a dark and lyrical novel he has written. The Kept is a thrilling debut” — Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy

“A work of historical fiction that is both atmospheric and memorable, suffused with dread and suspense right up to the last page.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Scott is both compassionate moralist and master storyteller in this outstanding debut.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“The author has crafted a laudable, compelling, tightly woven tale with memorable characters. Scott writes with an eloquence that urges the reader to return to passages and reread them just to admire his superb skill. Highly recommended.” — Library Journal (starred review)

“Scott’s first novel epitomizes what’s great in this renaissance [of literary Westerns]: economy of dialogue; unsparing realism; the giddiness and terror induced by the knowledge of liberty.” — Maclean's

“A vivid, violent, beautiful book...At turns tender and harsh, twisted and lyrical.” — Interview

“Half beautiful, half disturbing, [James Scott’s lyrical images] decorate The Kept like frescoes in a crumbling cathedral…Feels like the shell of a Cormac McCarthy novel filled with the intricate yearning and familial strife of a Lorca play…A gripping combination.” — The Rumpus

From the Publisher

Dark and mysterious… A novel whose daring is found in its bleakness… The plot unfolds with a weighty languor reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy… sparse, elegant… haunting.

New York Times

The Kept is both a thrilling adventure and a literary triumph. Following the journey of a mother and son who lose everything, only to find each other, James Scott’s haunting tale will astonish and enchant you, the words echoing long after the final pages have turned.

Hannah Tinti

The Kept is a deeply moving, disconcerting novel… Scott manages something quite difficult here, balancing both terror and tenderness with apparent ease. By the end of the book, you’ll be convinced that he can do just about anything.

Kevin Wilson

Scott is a master of mood… This landscape is more mythic than historic, and Scott’s characters are dark brush strokes of appetite and deceit. His central concern, as a storyteller, is the dynamic of consequence.

New York Times Book Review

Scott’s first novel epitomizes what’s great in this renaissance [of literary Westerns]: economy of dialogue; unsparing realism; the giddiness and terror induced by the knowledge of liberty.

Maclean's

A vivid, violent, beautiful book...At turns tender and harsh, twisted and lyrical.

Interview

What a gripping story teller James Scott is and what a dark and lyrical novel he has written. The Kept is a thrilling debut

Margot Livesy

Narrator Kate Udall makes James Scott’s disturbing debut novel choice listening. In northern New York in the late nineteenth century, Elspeth Howell and her 12-year-old son, Caleb, set out to find the men who brutally murdered their family. While the two are motivated by revenge, this textured story offers much more. Udall’s performance slowly peels away carefully concealed secrets whose revelations leave no one unscathed. Udall captures the characters’ moral wretchedness in an unforgiving world, the rage and pent-up emotions of mother and son, and the human capacity for cruelty. Not for the squeamish due to some explicit raw descriptions, Scott’s controlled prose and Udall’s understated narration make this an experience that will stay with you long after you remove your earbuds. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2014 - AudioFile

Narrator Kate Udall makes James Scott’s disturbing debut novel choice listening. In northern New York in the late nineteenth century, Elspeth Howell and her 12-year-old son, Caleb, set out to find the men who brutally murdered their family. While the two are motivated by revenge, this textured story offers much more. Udall’s performance slowly peels away carefully concealed secrets whose revelations leave no one unscathed. Udall captures the characters’ moral wretchedness in an unforgiving world, the rage and pent-up emotions of mother and son, and the human capacity for cruelty. Not for the squeamish due to some explicit raw descriptions, Scott’s controlled prose and Udall’s understated narration make this an experience that will stay with you long after you remove your earbuds. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2014 - AudioFile

★ 2013-10-05
The crimes of a benighted woman spark horrific blowback; in its wake, this wrenching first novel from the Massachusetts-based Scott tracks two lost souls in the New York hinterland of the late 19th century. Elspeth Howell is a midwife returning home after a monthslong absence. She trudges through falling snow to their remote farmhouse only to find husband Jorah and four of their children shot dead. The sole survivor is 12-year-old Caleb, who had watched the three killers from the barn. It gets worse; Caleb shoots his mother by accident; his anguish is profound. Then the house burns down, the unintended consequence of Caleb's funeral pyre. Elspeth survives. The carnage is linked to her own crimes of opportunity. She and Jorah, a Native American, had tried to conceive, but Elspeth was barren and became seized by the compulsion to steal babies. None of the children are hers. A deeply religious woman, she aches with the consciousness of her sins and yearns for divine punishment but is unable to stop. A tip steers Caleb and the recovering Elspeth, in pursuit of the killers, to Watersbridge, the gritty town beside Lake Erie from which she stole Caleb. With the revenge motif as a backbeat, the pair, haunted though they are, improvise new lives for themselves. Elspeth, disguised as a man, finds work hauling ice. The resourceful Caleb is hired as a handyman at a brothel. The owner, a smooth-as-silk villain, kills without compunction, and Caleb guesses correctly that clues here will help his search. He encounters two fearsomely angry men, both indirect victims of Elspeth's thefts. Yet, for all the collateral damage she has caused, Elspeth has a core of decency sufficient to retain our sympathy. Caleb is spun around like a top through heartbreaking discoveries and narrow escapes, but any excess in the material is tempered by the calm restraint of Scott's language. Scott is both compassionate moralist and master storyteller in this outstanding debut.

Kirkus Reviews