A Light in August: William Falconer

This story follows the live of Lena. Her parents both die when she is a child and she goes to live with an older brother. She lives with him for several years until she gets pregnant and then decides to go after the man who claimed he would marry her once he made a living. She arrives in the town her boyfriend Lucas supposedly ran off to and sees a house on fire. As the story progresses we learn Lucas aka "Joe Brown" started the fire and murdered the woman in it. The story doesn't come right out and say this, but it can be deduced. The story switches back and forth between points of view and we learn pretty much every character's history. The story centers on Joe Christmas. He was raised in an orphanage until he stumbles upon the dietician having sex with a doctor. The dietician wants to get rid of him in case he gets her in trouble. He is adopted by a very religious couple. The man is obsessed on religion and abusive to Joe. Eventually Joe accidently kills him when he finds Joe with a prostitute. Present day, Joe comes into town and decides to live as a white man after spending the last 15 years crossing the lines every few years. The abolitionist he lives with gets pregnant shortly after "Joe Brown" comes to town and starts helping Joe Christmas with his bootlegging. Joe Brown finds out Joe Christmas is partially black and sleeping with a white woman so he kills the white woman and burns her house down trying to hide the evidence. There is a $1,000 reward for the murderer and he makes up a story that it was Joe Christmas, who recently left town. Since Christmas is black the town instantly believes he was the murderer and goes after him. He is eventually killed and castrated. During the man hunt we meet Christmas' grandparents who recognize him, his grandfather wants him killed, his grandmother wants him to live 1 more day as a free man. We learn Christmas' mother died in childbirth and the grandfather dropped him off at the orphanage after killing the black father. At the end of the story Joe Brown runs off after finding Lena and his baby. The man helping Lena, who had fallen in love with her, is seen at the end of the book with her still helping her track down Brown.