A Place to Come to by Robert Penn Warren. Short summary

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The novel about the life of a philologist Jed Tewksbury. Having reached the heights of his professional career, the man is trying to find peace in the soul and harmony in the family. He returns to the town of his childhood.

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Jed Tewksbury was the son of a drunkard who liked to wave a Confederate War saber in a drunken stupor. The novel consistently reveals the life of the main character. He goes to college, where he has his first sexual experience. Then he gets married, and because of that his career goes up.

But Jed constantly feels the gulf that lies between him and his surroundings. Even Latin, the dead language he specializes in, makes him an outsider in this celebration of life. He tries to find, to recreate harmony with other people.

He undertakes an odyssey, with the goal of arriving in his hometown in the state of Alabama. But the people he manages to get close to are friends, his World War II comrades-in-arms.

Eventually, the hero finds family comfort — in his son’s home. And a quarter of a century later, he visits his ancestral home.