The Root of Everything and Lightning

In this pair of novellas, award-winning author Scott Alexander Hess provides a richly textured portrait of the shifting landscape of the 20th century American Dream.

The Root of Everything is a multi-generational saga tracking fathers and sons from Germany's Black Forest to Missouri as they experience tragedy, triumph, forbidden love, and hard-earned reckonings.

In Lightning, a young man in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 1918 is driven by his deep love for horses and his emerging feelings for another man. Offered a chance to move to New York City, he finds his true destiny.

Shot through with layers of grief, passion, dangerous landscapes, and old-world mysticism, these are journeys into love, loss, and twists of fate that define us. Hess tells stories as deep as the Missouri River and as wide-ranging as the Wild American West.