It is 1959 in Hope Mills, amill town in North Carolina. Cotton is losing the market to the new easy care fabrics, men are losing their jobs, and race relations are on the verge of explosion. Hope Mills' women are trapped economically, socially, and psychologically; at the mercy of their men in a strongly patriarchal society. Young girls live on dreams of escape, yet reality hold them in a firm grip. Told from the perspective of Tollie, who hopes to go to college, and der best friend Lily, who has her sights firmly set on Hollywood, this is a powerful portrait of life in the rural South at the cusp of a new age, and provides a compassionate yet sanguine glimpse at the inner torments and triumphs of two young women facing the challenges of adulthood with tremendous endurance and determination.

Hope Mills

Literature & Fiction

Pierce, Constance

United States

Harper-perennial

Winner of Pushcart's Fifteenth Editors' Book Award, Hope Mills is a first novel that lovingly and accurately brings to life a Southern mill town at the end of an era. It is 1959 in Hope Mills, North Carolina. Cotton is giving way to synthetic fiber; mill work is declining; race relations are volatile; the nearby military base is expanding; girls and women too often are trapped economically and socially; men are losing the assurance of secure work and dominion over their families. Through the eyes of Tollie and Lily, two high-school chums who are each other's salvation, Constance Pierce chronicles a time of enormous change and difficulty and ends on a note of endurance and triumph. Novelist Lee Smith comments: "An exceptionally engaging first novel. . . . Writing always with a clean lyricism, a fine sense of humor, and an infallible feel for time and place, Constance Pierce makes us care deeply about all the characters, rich and poor, old and young, crazy and sane, who inhabit this perfectly rendered mill town."

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Pushcart Press

When Things Get Back to Normal

In a tone at once comic, gothic, and deceptively pastoral, the stories in this collection continue the tradition of Hawthorne, Poe, and James—Americans pursuing a dialectic with Europe—but in a late 20th century context. Constance Pierce's character's, with their fetishes for food and property, hide their eyes with daydreams, hallucinations, and enormous feats of rationale in their longing to return to the happy normal state they tell themselves they once enjoys but which likely never existed at all. Subtly questioning their characters' illusions and nostalgia, these stories, set in such territory as World War II Germany, the French countryside, and Long Island Sound, address the often nebulous relationships between private and public life, old and new ideas, fantasy and reality.

History & Criticism

Fiction Collective 2

Philippe at His Bath

Poetry

Water Row Pr

Through the eyes of Tollie and Lily, two high school chums, Pierce lovingly and accurately brings to life a Southern mill town at the end of an era. This first novel was nominated as an outstanding book of the year by the American Library Association.

Pushcart Pr

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Books by Pierce, Constance