Praise for -- THE CLEARING 'An extraordinary novel, one of the best I've read in years' -- Annie Proulx, Guardian Summer Books 'So firmly located and vividly realised that you can almost smell the Louisiana swampwater ... a gripping, action-packed tale, but also a notably intelligent one' -- Jem Poster, Guardian 'Near-perfect ... untouchably good' -- Alan Warner, Daily Telegraph Summer Books 'Astonishingly powerful ... brilliantly written and the characters in their mire are superbly realised' -- Daily Telegraph 'Carries an emotional charge far beyond its pages...I cannot recommend it highly enough.' -- Peter Straus, Literary Review 'He captures the fetid atmosphere of a frontier society poised to join the modern world with great skill, each sentence polished to perfection' -- Independent on Sunday 'Compels you forward like a handcar on a downhill slope, until the final escape...you read it in wonder' -- Kent Haruf 'It presents the reader with an interesting dilemma: do you give in to the stifling suspense and read quickly, to find out what happens to the novel's vivid characters, or do you go slow, savoring each delicious sentence, and thereby risking, by the climax, a nervous breakdown?' -- Richard Russo 'A marvelous evocation of time and place merges seamlessly with Gautreaux's powerful and timeless story' -- William Gay