Robert Benton

Coleman Silk is a respected professor at a New England college who suddenly finds his life unraveling after a comment he makes about some African-American students is misinterpreted as a racial slur. As the scandal heats up, Nathan Zuckerman, a writer researching a biography of Silk, begins to dig deeply into Silk's life. Eventually, matters are made worse when Coleman's affair with a young married janitor named Faunia Farley is exposed. But amid...

In this affectionate story of small town life in upstate New York, Sully, a fitfully employed 60-year-old construction worker, is a cheerful curmudgeon who has made a lifetime of bad decisions. He unexpectedly has a chance to make right some of them when his estranged son and grandson drop back into his life.

This tale of friendship and survival set during the days of the 1860's focuses on a roguish group of runaways living by their wits and natural instincts. Two of them in particular are complementary opposites: Drew is a good boy from God-fearing stock in Ohio, out West to evade the draft. Jake is a scruffy scoundrel - a saddle tramp not above a little larceny here and there. Along the trail they encounter a variety of varmints and renegades. And eventually,...