Delta Wedding - Softcover

Eudora Welty

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0860682897 ISBN 13: 9780860682899

Publisher: Penguin Books India, 1982

Synopsis

On the tenth of September 1923 little motherless Laura McRaven travels from Jackson, Mississippi, on a train named the Yellow Dog. She is returning to Shellmound, the family plantation at the heart of the delta. There she is swept into the arms of the Fairchilds, her huge collection of entrancing relatives. They have gathered for the marriage of seventeen-year-old Dabney - the prettiest of the Fairchild girls - to a man from the mountains: the overseer Troy Flavin. The ordinary events in the life of this clannish, proud, loving and quarrelling family are wonderfully portrayed as Dabney's great day draws nearer...

About this title

From the Back Cover

"The nickname of the train was the Yellow Dog. Its real name was the Yazoo-Delta. It was a mixed train. The day was the 10th of September, 1923-afternoon. Laura McRaven, who was nine years old, was on her first journey alone."

So begins Delta Wedding, Eudora Welty's portrait of a large and clamorous Southern family living on their plantation in the Mississippi Delta, and into whose midst Laura McRaven, whose mother has just died, is thrust. When Laura arrives, the Fairchilds are preparing for the marriage of Dabney, not the oldest but the prettiest of the Fairchild girls. Drama leads to drama, revelation to revelation. The result is a sometimes riotous portrait of a Southern family and the motherless child who learns to become one of them. Eudora Welty's first novel remains an American classic.

"By all odds the best thing [Eudora Welty] has written."
--The Atlantic

"Presents the essence of the Deep South and does it with infinite finesse."
--The Christian Science Monitor

"The portrait she gives us . . . is nothing short of wonderful, and the way she gets hold the particular quality of Southern speech, with its nuances, obliquities, and special kind of humor, is a minor triumph."--The New Yorker
Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was born in Jackson, Mississippi. She worked as a photographer during the Depression and published her first book, a collection of short stories, in 1941. In addition to short fiction, Welty wrote novels, novellas, essays, and reviews, and was the winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. By the time of her death in 2001, Welty had established herself as one of the most important and beloved American writers of the twentieth century.

About the Author

Eudora Welty was born in 1908 in Jackson, Mississippi, which is still her home. One of America's most distinguished writers, she has published five novels and as many volumes of short stories. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books India
• Publication date: 1982
• ISBN 10: 0860682897
• ISBN 13: 9780860682899
• Binding: Paperback