Vietnam's moral fallout is revealed to "Sam" Hughes, an eighteen-year-old Kentucky girl whose father was killed in the war and whose Uncle Emmett may be suffering from Agent Orange

In Country

Literature & Fiction

Bobbie Ann Mason

United States

Harper&Row

Spence And Lila

A farm couple married forty-six years look back on their long relationship during Lila's extended hospitalization

Spence and Lila

From acclaimed author Bobbie Ann Mason, her Pulitzer Prize-nominated memoir chronicling three generations of her Kentucky lineage, spanning a century in the life of an American family. "Mason gets to the heart of a whole generation.... She can write the hard truth about home, love, loss.... Immensely satisfying." —New York Times Book Review People love and remember the novels of Bobbie Ann Mason because they ring so true. This dazzling memoir has the same power. In it, Mason tells the story of her own family—a multilayered saga of three generations, their aspirations, their conflicts, and the ties that bound them to one another. Spanning decades, Clear Springs gracefully weaves together the stories of Mason's grandparents, parents, and her own generation. The narrative moves from the sober industriousness of a Kentucky farm to the hippie lifestyle of the countercultural 1960s; from a New York fan magazine to the shock-therapy ward of a mental institution; from a county poorhouse to the set of a Hollywood movie. In the process of recounting her own odyssey—the story of an isolated girl who dreamed of distant places—Mason depicts the changes that have come to family, to women, and to heartland America in the twentieth century. Ultimately, Clear Springs is a heartfelt portrait of an extended family, and a profound affirmation of the importance of family love.

CLEAR SPRINGS

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Perennial

Contemporary

Vintage

Feather Crowns

In turn-of-the-century Kentucky, Christianna and James Wheeler have the first recorded North American quintuplets, leading to an early version of the media circus. By the author of In Country. 75,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. Tour.

San Val

Clear Springs: A Family Story

Paw Prints 2008-06-26

What is it about the relationship between fathers and daughters that provokes so much exquisite tenderness, satisfying communion, longing for more, idealization from both ends, followed often if not inevitably by disappointment, hurt, and the need to understand and forgive, or to finger the guilt of not understanding and loving enough? writes Phillip Lopate, in his introduction to Every Father's Daughter, a collection of 24 personal essays by women writers writing about their fathers. The editor, Margaret McMullan, is herself a distinguished novelist and educator. About half of these essays were written by invitation for this anthology; others were selected by Ms. McMullan and her associate, Philip Lopate, who provides an introduction. The contributors include many well-known writers Alice Munro, Jayne Anne Phillips, Alexandra Styron, Ann Hood, Bobbie Ann Mason, Maxine Hong Kingston, among others as well as writers less well-known but no less cogent, inventive, perceptive, lacerating, questioning, or loving of their fathers. From the Foreword by Margaret McMullan After my father died, I couldn't read or write, perhaps because, in the end, my father was unable to read or write. I didn't know it then, but I was looking for a collection of intensely personal essays, written by great women writers telling me about their fathers and how they came to know their fathers, a collection which might help me make some kind of sense of my own very close relationship with my father. I wanted to know from women, replacement sisters, if they had similar relationships with their fathers as I had with mine. Or, if their relationships were altogether different, I wanted to know how exactly these relationships were different. I wanted to know if the fact that my father was Southern had anything to do with anything. I suppose, more than anything, I just wanted to know that I wasn't alone in my love, my loss, my loneliness. I wanted to read this anthology, but it did not exist. Writers write the book they want to read. Editors do the same. This book came out of a need, my own, personal, selfish need. Eventually, I contacted the authors I loved and admired some of them friends, some of them friends of my father s. I never wanted this to feel like an assignment, but I suppose it was. I simply asked these women to tell me about their fathers. They took it from there. For some authors, the idea of writing about a father just clicked, and they wrote their essays, often within days of the request. We all have stories about our fathers, even if it's a bad story or a non-story, it's a story. If you write, you will read these essays and feel the need to write your own. I kept my father's tastes very much in mind during the difficult but joyful process of selecting essays for this book. This collection reflects my father, and, of course, other fathers as well. These essays are a sort of collage or mosaic of fatherhood and all the ways daughters communicate or don't with their fathers. Of course, there's a long list of wonderful women writers not included here this anthology really should extend itself into another volume.

Every Father's Daughter: Twenty-four Women Writers Remember Their Fathers

Etc.

MAXINE HONG KINGSTON

Ann Hood

Bliss Broyard

alice-munro

jane-smiley

jayne-anne-phillips

Community & Culture

McPherson & Company

Geboren in Amerika

Fischer Verlag

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Books by Bobbie Ann Mason