The Gardener's Son

by Cormac McCarthy

Overview

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy’s acclaimed first screenplay, the basis for an Emmy-nominated film—a taut, riveting intergenerational drama of fathers and sons, power, inequality, rage, and violence set in post-Civil War South Carolina.

Set in Graniteville, South Carolina, The Gardener’s Son is a tale of privilege and hardship, animosity and vengeance brought to life through two families: the Greggs, the wealthy owners of a cotton mill, and their employees the McEvoys, a father and son beset by misfortune. After Robert McEvoy loses his leg in an accident—rumored to have been caused by his nemesis James Gregg, the son of the mill’s founder—the angry and bitter young man deserts his job and family.

Two years later, Robert returns. His mother is dying, and his father, the mill’s gardener, is confined indoors working the factory line. These intertwined events stoke the slow burning rage McEvoy has long carried, a fury that erupts in a terrible act of violence that ultimately consumes the Gregg family and his own.

Made into an acclaimed film broadcast on PBS in 1976, The Gardener’s Son received two Emmy Award nominations and was screened at the Berlin and Edinburgh Film Festivals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062287540
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	12/09/2014
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	117,663
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Cormac McCarthy is the author of numerous novels, including Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, and The Road. He has won the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. His plays include The Stonemason and The Sunset Limited, which was originally performed by Steppenwolf Theatre Company. His screenplay The Counselor was made into a film directed by Ridley Scott and released in 2013.

Editorial Reviews

07/01/2014
In spring 1975, film director Richard Pearce asked McCarthy to write a screenplay, something the distinguished novelist had never done before. Drawing inspiration from a few footnotes in a 1928 biography of a famous antebellum industrialist, McCarthy ultimately completed a classically tough-minded McCarthy-esque tale of two Southern families, the mill-owning Greggs and the McElvoys, who are among the mill's employees. The film was broadcast on PBS in 1976 and received two Emmy Award nominations; the screenplay is back in print and available in trade paperback for the first time.

Library Journal