Background
Wolff was born on December 25, 1918 in born in Grass Lake, Jackson County, Michigan. She grew up on her grandparents" farm and attended a one-room country school.
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Sudden Rain: A Novel
(A vivid, gripping, emotional, and addictive read, Sudden ...)
A vivid, gripping, emotional, and addictive read, Sudden Rain is also a rare and valuable portrait of an era: the long-lost final manuscript of Maritta Wolff—the author who, at the age of twenty-two, published what Sinclair Lewis deemed "the most important novel of the year," Whistle Stop (1941). Hailed by Entertainment Weekly as "the Nixon-era precursor to Tom Perrotta's acclaimed novel, Little Children" this is a compelling drama that offers great insight into the nature of marriage -- both then and now. Now that Sudden Rain has come out of its hiding place -- in Wolff's refrigerator, found after her death -- it remains gloriously frozen in time. Set in the fall of 1972, the novel perfectly captures, with expansive emotion and cinematic detail, the domestic trends of three generations of middle-class couples living in suburban Los Angeles. A brilliant portrait of its burgeoning era, Sudden Rain also offers striking cultural commentary on our everyday notions of love and marriage; individuality, equality, and community; and the promise and pursuit of the American Dream.
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Sudden Rain By Wolff, Maritta ( Author ) Paperback 2006
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Maritta Wolff
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University of Michigan.
Career
Whistle Stop is a seamy tale of the Veeches, a shiftless family living in a whistle-stop town near Detroit. The novel, depicting incest, violence, and containing much more vulgar language than was usual at the time, was published the next year by Random House. That Wolff, a mere 22-year-old, was the author of so hard-boiled a novel gave her an instant notoriety, and Whistle Stop became an immediate best-seller, going into five editions and a special armed forces edition
Yet the book was not without literary merit, Sinclair Lewis calling it "the most important novel of the year."
Whistle Stop was adapted into a 1946 film starring Ava Gardner and George Raft.
Wolff"s second novel, Night Shift, attracted more critical praise, especially for its dialog. Over the next 20 years she wrote four more best-selling novels.
Always a private person who shunned publicity, Wolff, in 1972, refused her publisher"s request to go on a promotional tour for a recently finished novel, Sudden Rain, and as a result the novel was never published during her lifetime. At that point she evidently ceased writing fiction.
Skidmore died in a house fire in 1946.
In 1947 Wolff married a costume jeweller, Leonard Stegman, by whom she had a son, Hugh Stegman. After Wolff"s death, the manuscript for Sudden Rain, which had been kept safely in her refrigerator for the last thirty years of her life, was published (along with re-issues of Whistle Stop and Night Shift) to much acclaim.
Achievements
Works
book
-
Sudden Rain: A Novel
(A vivid, gripping, emotional, and addictive read, Sudden ...)
- Buttonwood
- Sudden Rain By Wolff, Maritta ( Author ) Paperback 2006
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Sudden Rain: A Novel
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Born
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Died
July 1, 2002 (aged 83) -
Nationality
United States