Reynolds Price

An old woman born in 1900 reflects on the joys and sorrows of her long life, commenting on them with wisdom. She is Roxanna Slade, matriarch of a rural family, and her story gives a portrait of the South before the great changes. Rosanna begins her story on her twentieth birthday--a day that introduces her to the harsh realities of adulthood and changes the course of her life forever.

When Reynolds Price died in January 2011, he left behind one final work--200 candid, heartrending manuscript pages about a critical period in his young adulthood. Picking up where his previous memoir, Ardent Spirits, left off, the work documents a brief time from 1961 to 1965, perhaps the most leisurely of Price's life, but also one of enormous challenge and growth. Approaching thirty, Price writes, is to face the notion that "This is it. I'm now...