Beasts of the Southern Wild and Other Stories
by Doris Betts
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Back in print at last, the nine beautifully crafted tales in Beasts of the Southern Wild and Other Stories display Doris Betts at the top of her form: compassionate, witty, and unforgettable. "The Ugliest Pilgrim" takes you into the adventures and into the heart of a disfigured young woman who has run away from her life in search of a better one. This award-winning story is the basis for the musical Violet, which won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. In "Hitchhiker," a wary secretary show more hitches a ride in a boat with a man hell-bent on saving fish; instead he saves her from the river -- and herself. And in the title story, Betts brilliantly captures the inner life of a teacher and writer struggling to control her classroom, her household, and her life. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
I am amazed that very few American readers seem to know of or read Doris Betts. She is a magnificent American writer of the south, earlier in the 20th century. These stories are wonderful. I have to admit that I discovered Ms Betts only in 1999. A musical called "Violet" was composed by a prominent Broadway writer based on one of her stories. In Canada our then 11 year old daughter played and sang and acted the role of young Violet, to rave reviews I might add. I then bought and read a number of Ms Betts' books and enjoyed all of them.
Is it trite to say that this collection of stories made me laugh, made me uncomfortable, and made me cry? It did all of those things and more.
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National Book Award Finalists - Fiction
377 works; 12 members
Books Set in North Carolina
84 works; 7 members
Author Information
14+ Works 570 Members
Doris Betts was born Doris June Waugh in Statesville, North Carolina on June 4, 1932. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where as a sophomore she won the Mademoiselle College Fiction contest for the story Mr. Shawn and Father Scott. After working as a newspaper reporter for a number of years, she joined the faculty show more of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1966. She taught creative writing there for 32 years. During her lifetime, she wrote 6 novels and 3 short story collections. Her novel, Souls Raised from the Dead, won the Southern Book Award in 1995. Her other works include The Gentle Insurrection, Tall Houses in Winter, The Scarlet Thread, The River to Pickle Beach, and The Sharp Teeth of Love. She won numerous awards including the N.C. Award for Literature, the John Dos Passos Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Medal of Merit for her short stories, and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction from the N.C. Literary and Historical Association, which she won three times. Her short story, The Ugliest Pilgrim, was made into an Academy Award-winning film and a musical that won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1998. She died of lung cancer on April 21, 2012 at the age of 79. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Reviews
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- Languages
- English
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