Sweet, sleepy -- beautiful -- old Pompey's Head, South Carolina. Anson Page thought he'd ground it out of his life for good. Now a Manhattan lawyer representing a large publishing house, he's returning to his hometown after fifteen years to investigate the mystery surrounding one of his client's authors, a major American novelist who lives on nearby Tamburlaine Island. Both painfully familiar and irrevocably altered, the landmarks and people in Pompey's Head resurrect for Page the sweep of his past life. As he sets about resolving business matters, he collides headlong with the enduring power of lineage to determine belonging and dominance, exclusion and shame, and the realization that leaving does not mean escaping.
A deft interlacing of recollection and suspense, The View from Pompey's Head is Hamilton Basso's most popularly acclaimed novel. When first published, it spent forty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into seven languages.