Trailer Park Tuesday: Neverhome by Laird Hunt

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.

Unless you're allergic to Civil War novels and/or luminous prose, you'll be adding Laird Hunt's new novel Neverhome to your reading list after watching this short, gorgeous video.  Perhaps you've already bought the book; maybe you've even read it; and chances are you agree with Paul Auster when he says "its sentences seem to rise up from the earth itself.  Laird Hunt had me under his spell from the first word of Neverhome to the last."  Likewise, I was held spellbound by this trailer which uses period photos, music and voice-over narration in ways that would make Ken Burns green with envy.  Everything comes together perfectly in the all-too-short minute we spend getting teased about Neverhome, the story of a farmer's faithful wife who leaves her husband to don the uniform of a Union soldier in the Civil War.  I haven't had the chance to read the novel, but it's edging higher in the To-Be-Read pile, thanks to its well-crafted sentences--from the opening "I was strong and he was not, so it was me went to war to defend the Republic" to the one highlighted in the trailer: "He sent me a thimble of dirt in that letter and asked me to swallow it so I could remember him and our good home."  I don't know about you, but I can't wait to taste the rich earth of Laird Hunt's words.