Shortly before his death at a tragically young age, author Thomas Wolfe presented his editor with an epic masterwork that was subsequently published as three separate novels:
You Can't Go Home Again
,
The Hills Beyond
, and
The Web and the Rock
.
The Web and the Root
features the three initial sections of the
, widely considered to be the book's strongest material. A prequel to
, it is the story of George Webber's momentous journey from Libya Falls, North Carolina, to the Golden City of the North—offering vivid, sometimes cutting depictions of rural pleasures and small-town clannishness while exploring boundless urban possibility and the complex, violent undercurrents of the metropolis.