(Fiction; Vintage Contemporaries, 1973)
Joy Williams’s debut novel received nearly universal acclaim as well as a 1974 National Book Award nomination. Praising the novel, the New York Times noted: “Joy Williams may be the most ‘relevant’ woman writing at this time. . . . You might say that she puts the dignity back into despair.” The quarter century since the book’s publication has not diminished the impact of Williams’s prose. Every sentence moves with the urgent human desire to find one’s place in the world, to find what love is, and to understand the nature of God.
