James L Roberts - Cliffsnotes on Faulkners Light in August

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Lena Grove, whose parents are dead, goes to live with her brother. While there, she gets pregnant by a man named Lucas Burch, who runs out on her but not before saying that hell send for Lena once he finds a town in which they can settle down. Hearing no word from Lucas for a long time, the pregnant Lena walks from Alabama into Mississippi looking for him. Along the way she hears that Lucas might be in Jefferson, so she walks toward that town. On the day she arrives in Jefferson, an old plantation house owned by Joanna Burden is on fire. We later learn that Joe Christmas, who lived in an old slave cabin on the plantation and was having a sexual relationship with Joanna, is accused of the murder. The Jefferson townspeople seem more angry that Joe is part black and has killed a white woman than they are about it being Joanna who was murdered.

Flashback three years earlier to the Jefferson planing mill where a man named Byron Bunch works; Byron will become one of the main charactersand a primary narratorin the novel. A man named Joe Christmas shows up looking for work and is hired, followed soon thereafter by a man named Joe Brown being hired. Christmas and Brown work together and form a relationship about which the other workers are unsure. Brown lets it be known that Christmas used to run a whiskey distillery; its unclear if Christmas still runs it. But the talk is that Christmas still does, and that Brown delivers the whiskey to whomever will buy it. Christmas quits the planing mill; Brown quits soon thereafter. We learn that Christmasand perhaps Brown as wellsupposedly lives in an old slave quarter on the grounds of an old plantation owned by Miss Joanna Burden. Burdens family had moved to Jefferson from the north during Reconstruction; Burden purportedly remains a Yankeewhich in Jefferson means befriending blacks.

Byron Bunch is working alone at the planing mill when Lena Grove shows up looking for Lucas Burch. Byron and Lena strike up a conversation, during which Byron lets slip that Joe Brown is an alias of Lucas Burchs. Byron is disappointed because he has started to have affections for Lena.

The story recounts how Reverend Gail Hightower and his wife came to Jefferson long ago when Hightower was hired by a Jefferson Presbyterian church to be its minister. Oftentimes Hightowers wife leaves Jefferson supposedly to visit her family, but one day a woman from Jefferson who is in Memphis shopping sees Mrs. Hightower, and Jefferson soon begins gossiping about why Mrs. Hightower regularly visits Memphis. Eventually she is institutionalized, and once released returns to be with her husband in Jefferson. However, she soon again regularly visits Memphis and eventually dies after falling through a hotel window; she was in the hotel with a man with whom she had registered as husband and wife. The sensationalism of Reverend Hightowers wife having been in a Memphis hotel with another man turns Jefferson against Hightower, and eventually he is forced to resign his position from the church. The town tries to force him to leave Jefferson altogether, but he refuses. The furor eventually dies down, but Hightower is forever regarded as damned by the people of Jefferson.

Byron Bunch visits Hightower and narrates how the Burden house has burned down. Miss Burden is dead from her neck being cut, and it appears that the fire was set to cover up the murder. Brown is questioned by the sheriff and claims that Christmas and Miss Burden have been sleeping with one another; even more shocking to the sheriff is Browns assertion that Christmas is part black. Its unclear how truthful Brown is in relating the details concerning Christmas, Miss Burden, and the fire.

The story then flashes back even farther when Joe Christmas was five years old and living in an orphanage, and he inadvertently caught the dietician and another orphanage employee having sex. Joe thinks hes in trouble because he was eating a mouthful of toothpaste in the dieticians room; the dietician thinks that Joe will tell that he saw her and the man together. The dietician contrives to get Joe sent to an orphanage for black children rather than remaining at the white childrens orphanage. Eventually, a man named McEachern adopts Joe and takes him home; McEachern is unaware that Joe is part black.

Time passes, and Joe eventually grows into a teenager. At seventeen, he begins sneaking out of the McEachern house and meeting a waitress named Bobbie from town. Their relationship is sexual. Joe is more seriousand naiveabout their relationship than Bobbie is. McEachern begins to suspect that Joe is sneaking out of the house and one night sees Joe go into the stable, where Joe keeps a suit to wear when meeting Bobbie. A car picks up Joe, and McEachern follows on his horse. McEachern discovers Joe and Bobbie at a dance and begins yelling at Bobbie. Joe strikes McEachern with a chair. Bobbie runs from the dance, and Joe runs home to get the secret money that Mrs. McEachern has been hiding from her husband but not from Joe. Joe goes to where Bobbie lives, intending that he and Bobbie will run away together and get married. But the couple with whom Bobbie lives over the restaurant and a nameless man are preparing to leave town with Bobbie; all of them fear that Joe has killed McEachern and that the police will soon show up on their doorstep. Joe doesnt truly understand whats happening. The stranger repeatedly strikes Joe until Joe is close to losing consciousness.

Following his losing Bobbie, Joe runs away. For fifteen years he wanders, traveling between Chicago, Detroit, and Mexico, and finally heading into Mississippi. He happens upon the Burden house and breaks in to steal food. Joe is discovered by Miss Burden, who doesnt seem upset that Joe has broken into her kitchen. In fact, Miss Burden allows Joe to stay in an old slave cabin on her property. One night he enters the Burden house unannounced, goes to her bedroom, and has sex with her. But then, troubled with himself, Joe avoids her until one day he finds her in his cabin, where she tells Joe the story of herself and her ancestors.