The Churl

The second volume of William’s House focuses on Young Albert, the youngest addition to the Pefley family, and his formative childhood years. Albert’s growing relationship with his family and the development of his perception of the world are set against the backdrop of William’s continuing efforts to relentlessly pursue an increase in the Pefley family’s fortune and reputation in Alabama at the beginning of the twentieth century. Albert’s childhood unfolds in the heat and poverty of the recently defeated Confederacy, where war wounds still linger, and he must measure up to his father’s exacting expectations of character and industry, or risk failing the family name William has worked so hard to establish.