BIOGRAPHY · AUTHORS
Willie Morris
HALF AN HOUR north of Jackson on U.S. 49, not far beyond the Big Black River, the casual rolling land gives way to a succession of tall, lush hills, one after another for twelve or fifteen miles.
— from North toward home, 1967
Most acclaimed
North toward home
1967
"North Toward Home traces the personal development and intellectual growth of a sixth-generation southerner - from his carefree boyhood in Yazoo City, Mississippi, through his student years at the University of Texas and subsequent editorship of the crusading Texas Observer, to his entry into the literary world of New York City.". "But this self-styled "autobiography in mid-passage" is more than simply one man's emotional journey to understanding his own southern origins and regional identity while (albeit reluctantly) coming to regard North as home. As Morris chronicles his own experiences during the forties, fifties, and sixties, he also explains their relationship to larger contemporaneous trends in America."--BOOK JACKET.
My dog Skip
1995
Now a major motion picture form Warner Brothers, starring Kevin Bacon, Diane Lane, Luke Wilson, Frankie Muniz, and "Eddie" from the TV show Frasier (as Skip), and produced by Mark Johnson (Rain Man).In 1943 in a sleepy town on the banks of the Yazoo River, a boy fell in love with a puppy with a lively gait and an intellingent way of listening. The two grew up together having the most wonderful adventures. A classic story of a boy, a dog, and small-town America, My Dog Skip belongs on the same shelf as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Russell Baker's Growing Up. It will enchant readers of all ages for years to come.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The last of the Southern girls
1973
Carol Hollywell is beautiful, smart, elegant, and charming. A debutante from De Soto Point, Arkansas, and a recent graduate of Ole Miss, she is heir to a good southern name and a small southern fortune. She knows what she wants and, more important, knows how to get it. She is, in other words, the prototypical southern belle, a Scarlett O'Hara for the 1950s, and when she moves to Washington, D.C., in 1957, she sets, the town on its ear. Willie Morris' cleverly conceived and brilliantly executed novel (loosely based on a real-life figure) follows this headstrong woman from her arrival in the Capital and traces the ups and downs of her life in the political and social whirl of the city over the next decade and a half. Eventually, she becomes romantically involved with a prominent congressman - an idealist, a reformer, a man perhaps headed for the very pinnacle of political life. It is at first a dazzling alliance, yet the genuine satisfactions they find in their relationship cannot long withstand the pressures of the ambitions both of them harbor. The very drives that initially brought them together in the end propel their love affair into jeopardy. . Morris paints a devastatingly accurate portrait not only of a power-hungry woman but also of the society that feeds such hunger. His descriptions of Washington and its denizens - the politicos, the journalists, the socialities, and the hangers-on - are nothing short of breathtaking.