Shortly before his death at a tragically young age, author Thomas Wolfe presented his editor with an epic masterwork that was subsequently published as three separate novels: You Can't Go Home Again , The Hills Beyond , and The Web and the Rock. The Web and the Root features the three initial sections of the The Web and the Rock , widely considered to be the book's strongest material. A prequel to You Can't Go Home Again , it is the story of George Webber's momentous journey from Libya Falls, North Carolina, to the Golden City of the North?offering vivid, sometimes cutting depictions of rural pleasures and small-town clannishness while exploring boundless urban possibility and the complex, violent undercurrents of the metropolis.