Judgment Hill Author:Castle Freeman Jr A remarkable and complex portrait of a land and its people in transition. — Publishers Weekly: — The small Vermont town first seen in Freeman's short story collection, The Bride of Ambrose, serves as the setting of this intricate first novel. Tyler McClellan, a young Texas woman fleeing her menacing lover, is taken in by innkeeper Cordie Blankensh... more »ip, who, like everyone else in Ambrose, lives under the wing of Garrett Benteen, the town's self-appointed feudal lord. Tyler soon seduces Cordie's son, the failed Dartmouth jock who works as Benteen's chauffeur, then finds herself venturing ever deeper into a gothic maelstrom of ecological, political and personal interests. Lust for land and power, rape of natural resources, misplaced loyalties -- even a lurking primordial beast -- dance ominously around a plot involving a sleazy entrepreneur who deals in stolen antiques....« less