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June 17, 2025
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Description
Set in Paducah, Kentucky, Lee Cole’s follow-up to Groundskeeping (“An exacting, beautifully textured debut novel . . . presages a major career”—The New York Times Book Review) is a powerful, page-turning story of two half brothers navigating the complexities of class and privilege in the American South.
Fulfillment tells the story of two half brothers—Joel, a successful academic and author, whose marriage is in deep trouble, and his younger sibling Emmett, paralyzed by indecision and working on a factory assembly line—who find themselves at their family home in Kentucky and upend each other’s lives in devasting ways.
Between them is Alice, Joel's wife, a wry, passionate young woman who is being slowly asphyxiated by domestic tedium, and whose longing collides with Emmett’s hunger for connection and desire to escape a sense of burgeoning failure and shame. As the chemistry between them escalates, the family is plunged into a violent crucible, each character brought to a precipice of immutable catastrophe.
Incisive, poignant, gorgeously written, Lee Cole has written a haunting novel about class, privilege, brotherhood, and the American South, a book that asks whether people can change, and at what cost, and what it takes to build a life of fulfillment and meaning.
Fulfillment tells the story of two half brothers—Joel, a successful academic and author, whose marriage is in deep trouble, and his younger sibling Emmett, paralyzed by indecision and working on a factory assembly line—who find themselves at their family home in Kentucky and upend each other’s lives in devasting ways.
Between them is Alice, Joel's wife, a wry, passionate young woman who is being slowly asphyxiated by domestic tedium, and whose longing collides with Emmett’s hunger for connection and desire to escape a sense of burgeoning failure and shame. As the chemistry between them escalates, the family is plunged into a violent crucible, each character brought to a precipice of immutable catastrophe.
Incisive, poignant, gorgeously written, Lee Cole has written a haunting novel about class, privilege, brotherhood, and the American South, a book that asks whether people can change, and at what cost, and what it takes to build a life of fulfillment and meaning.
Product Details
Publisher | Knopf |
Publish Date | June 17, 2025 |
Pages | 336 |
Language | English |
Type | |
EAN/UPC | 9780593802861 |
Dimensions | 9.3 X 6.1 X 0.9 inches | 1.4 pounds |
About the Author
LEE COLE was born and grew up in rural Kentucky. He is the author of the novel Groundskeeping. A recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he now lives in Philadelphia.
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