William Faulkner · 1930 · overland

William Faulkner's 1930 novel, told in fractured monologues by fifteen voices, following the Bundren family's grotesque and oddly heroic journey to bury their mother in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. Flood, fire and folly beset the wagon and its terrible cargo. A landmark of modernist fiction. The journey is a short and local one, a few days by wagon across one Mississippi county.

1. 1
   Bundren Farm

   Addie Bundren dies, and her poor farm family sets out by wagon to honour her wish to be buried with her own people in the town of Jefferson.

2. 2
   The River Ford

   A flooded river nearly destroys them, drowning the mules and almost carrying off the coffin, as son Cash breaks his leg trying to save it.

3. 3
   Mottson

   Days on the road in the July heat, the coffin now a public scandal, the family shamed in the streets of Mottson.

4. 4
   Jefferson

   They reach Jefferson at last to bury Addie, where the grieving patriarch promptly acquires new teeth and a startling new wife.