There was no Labor Day holiday for Tom Sutpen. Every day he had to wrestle the red-eyed Virginia sun as he bent before the plow. Each sunset he shambled off to his shack. Each night was a black abyss as he heard his children cry out for food and his wife dream of shoes for each of the little ones.

Thomas Jr. saw the seasons turn his father’s hair wintry white. He smelled the whiff of death on his father’s breath, and decided to follow his dream far from the blistering gaze of the Virginia delta’s sun.

His journey through life was a quest for an unholy grail of pelf, paramours, and power. He became Colonel Sutpen of Mississippi. Vast plantations of white cotton stretched before the verandah where this blackhearted dictator ruled his slaves and his family with a rod of iron.

The story of …