Background
Douglas was born in Natchez, Mississippi and grew up in Hope, Arkansas, and Alexandria, Louisiana.
( Nat Stonebridge is a thirtyish divorcee who, because of...)
Nat Stonebridge is a thirtyish divorcee who, because of her sexy good looks and incorruptible disregard for convention, has stayed in trouble most of her life. Stranded at home in Philippi, a small town in the Mississippi Delta, after a divorce from her well-to-do husband, she is broke, bored, and unconcerned for anyone except herself. Looking for excitement, she becomes involved with Floyd Shotwell, the strange, solitary son of a rich and ruthless businessman. By turns ironic and funny and threatening as the raw land in which it takes place, the couple’s story moves toward a violent climax in which not only Nat’s physical safety, but the financial security of her family, are at stake. Douglas explores the theme of moral commitment as Nat is confronted with a decision, a sacrifice, which she knows will earn her only contempt. In turn, her friend, the gentle and reflective Wilburn Griffith, is forced to face the obsessive Shotwell with a weapon he abhors.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1617035998/?tag=2022091-20
(The elderly couple in this fine novel, a retired schoolte...)
The elderly couple in this fine novel, a retired schoolteacher and the doctor with whom she has had a lifelong, tender love affair, find that, almost by accident, they have forfeited control of their own lives. Trapped in a nursing home, they are the victims of the biblical "apostles of light," the deceitful do-gooders who profess righteousness. In subtle, elegant prose Ellen Douglas recounts a gripping story of their brave attempt to free themselves from a dreadful plight. They must confront both their corrupt and evil custodians and their well-meaning younger relatives who are tempted by greed, ambition, cowardice, and indifference. "Apostles of Light" was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1973.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0878057382/?tag=2022091-20
(At age 62, Corinne must grapple with the most painful tru...)
At age 62, Corinne must grapple with the most painful truth that her lifelong passion--which is anyone's passion, to love and be loved, body and soul--could burn unquenched forever. Gripping, smart, suspenseful, and at times, wonderfully witty, Douglas's widely acclaimed novel forms a searching and searing record of love, anger, confession and discovery.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807120073/?tag=2022091-20
(Set in Mississippi in 1971, this novel describes Alan's r...)
Set in Mississippi in 1971, this novel describes Alan's return to his abandoned family home and uncovers the history behind the death of his cousin and her friend. It is a portrait of the equivocal relationship between black and white.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0151783225/?tag=2022091-20
( So spontaneous is the writing in A Lifetime Burning, on...)
So spontaneous is the writing in A Lifetime Burning, one might believe these are indeed words of a woman desperately trying to understand what has happened to her life, beginning with the fact that her husband has stopped sleeping with her. Why? Is there a rival―perhaps “The Toad,” the unattractive housewife next door―or someone else, who will completely surprise the reader, as do many of the events of the protagonist’s story? At age sixty-two, Corinne must grapple with the most painful truth that her lifelong passion―which is anyone’s passion, to love and be loved, body and soul―could burn unquenched forever. Her imaginative narrative even when she is lying is as revealing as bedrock truth. A Lifetime Burning is as real as life itself―a novel shimmering and vital and recognizably true. Gripping, smart, suspenseful, and at times, wonderfully witty, Douglas’s widely acclaimed book forms a searching and searing record of love, anger, confession, and discovery.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1617036013/?tag=2022091-20
( This story of the modern South, of love denied and love...)
This story of the modern South, of love denied and love fulfilled, is a powerful account of the potential for violence that underlies this country’s passionate history. Ellen Douglas, a native of Mississippi and a prize-winning novelist of rare distinction, reveals the turbulent changes that rocked the South in the sixties and continue to this day. No event is predictable in this powerful novel. A young man who has spent several years in the North returns to his native Mississippi seeking rural peace. But solitude is not to be his, for soon he is caught up again in a traumatic event that happened seven years before in 1964―the death in an auto accident of the beautiful young cousin whom he loved. As the story unfolds, the people who were involved in that senseless tragedy reveal their part in it, and as they do, the reader becomes intensely involved not only in their lives but in what it means to be black or white in the modern South.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/161703603X/?tag=2022091-20
Douglas was born in Natchez, Mississippi and grew up in Hope, Arkansas, and Alexandria, Louisiana.
She graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1942.
She later taught writing there. She adopted the pen name Ellen Douglas before the publication of A Family’s Affairs to protect the privacy of two aunts, on whose lives she had based much of the plot. Douglas died of heart failure at the age of 91 on November 7, 2012.
Margalit Fox writes that Douglas"s work "explored the epochal divide between the Old South and the New, examining vast, difficult subjects — race relations, tensions between the sexes, the conflict between the needs of the individual and those of the community — through the small, clear prism of domestic life.".
( So spontaneous is the writing in A Lifetime Burning, on...)
(The elderly couple in this fine novel, a retired schoolte...)
(At age 62, Corinne must grapple with the most painful tru...)
( This story of the modern South, of love denied and love...)
(Set in Mississippi in 1971, this novel describes Alan's r...)
( Nat Stonebridge is a thirtyish divorcee who, because of...)
(Book by Douglas, Ellen)