It would have to be William Faulker's books. I remember reading The Sound and the Fury in high school and being blown away with how he was able to capture each character's voice--especially Benjy's perspective as someone with special needs. I ended up working at a summer camp with children with special needs and realized how accurate he was able to capture the storms within. The idea of a dysfunctional family was also a newfound idea for me. I just assumed my family was the most dysfunctional, and it was not until I read Faulker, did I realize that we all come from dysfunctional families and that we are all products of history gone bad. The way he wove stories and created new landscapes truly indicated to me his genius as well as the need for detailed narratives. As an immigrant who grew up in the racist North, reading Absalom, Absalom! provided a Southern lens to the ugly side of slavery and the race dynamics that we still see today--lingering like moss on trees.