Bobbie Ann Mason

From the acclaimed author of the classics Shiloh and Other Stories and In Country comes a beautifully crafted and profoundly moving novel which follows a woman as she looks back over her life and her first love. Ann Workman is smart but na ve, a misfit who's traveled from rural Kentucky to graduate school in the transformative years of the late 1960s. While Ann fervently seeks higher learning, she wants what all girls yearn for--a boyfriend. But not any boy. She wants the "Real Thing," to be in love with someone who loves her equally. Then Jimmy appears as if by magic. Although he comes from a very different place, upper-middle class suburban Chicago, he is a misfit too, a rebel who rejects his upbringing and questions everything. Ann and Jimmy bond through music and literature and their own quirkiness, diving headfirst into what seems to be a perfect relationship. But with the Vietnam War looming and the country in turmoil, their future is uncertain. Many years later, Ann recalls this time of innocence--and her own obsession with Jimmy--as she faces another life crisis. Seeking escape from her problems, she tries to imagine where she might be if she had chosen differently all those years ago. What if she had gone to Stanford University, as her mentor had urged, instead of a small school on the East Coast? Would she have been caught up in the Summer of Love and its subsequent dark turns? Or would her own good sense have saved her from disaster? Beautifully written and expertly told, Dear Ann is the wrenching story of one woman's life and the choices she has made. Bobbie Ann Mason captures at once the excitement of youth and the nostalgia of age, and how consideration of the road not taken--the interplay of memory and imagination--can illuminate, and perhaps overtake, our present.

Kentucky native Nancy Culpepper boldly left home to attend school in Massachusetts, married a Yankee, and raised her son in the Northeast. "One day I was feeding chickens and listening to Hank Williams and the next day I was expected to know what wines went with what," she tells her husband, Jack. Yet no matter where she travels, her rural southern heritage is never far from her thoughts, her habits, and her heart. Nancy is on a lifelong quest to understand her place in the world. Returning home to the family farm, she searches for photographic evidence of an ancestor bearing her own name. Still in her jeans, she brings home strange ideas and an assertiveness she learned up north. Always adventurous, Nancy travels far and wide-searching, seeking. The narrative sweep of her life traverses the turbulent sixties, the Vietnam War, the eighties and the foreboding death of John Lennon, and finally the new millennium-when a self-assured Nancy finally emerges. These humorous and often touching stories recount her courtship and marriage to Jack, her relationship with her precocious son, and the deep, loving bond between her parents, Spence and Lila Culpepper. Eventually Nancy's marriage is threatened by a cultural divide that plagued her and Jack from the start. But when she inherits the Culpepper family farm and discovers more pieces of her ancestral puzzle, she realizes that her life is assuming its proper shape. Later, standing on a lonely mountain in England, she sees the world from a surprising perspective. Bestselling author Bobbie Ann Mason's prizewinning Nancy Culpepper chronicles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, The Southern Review, and other distinguished literary anthologies. She has compiled these stories into one definitive collection, which includes the novella Spence + Lila, two new, never-before-published stories, and one Pushcart Prize winner. Heartfelt and thought-provoking, Nancy Culpepper is a poignant depiction of change and growth in a modern-day heroine.

A vibrant, sympathetic portrait of the once and future king of rock 'n' roll by the award-winning author of Shiloh and In Country To this clear-eyed portrait of the first rock 'n' roll superstar, Bobbie Ann Mason brings a novelist's insight and the empathy of a fellow Southerner who, from the first time she heard his voice on the family radio, knew that Elvis was "one of us." Elvis Presley deftly braids the mythic and human aspects of his story, capturing both the charismatic, boundary-breaking singer who reveled in his celebrity and the soft-spoken, working-class Southern boy who was fatally unprepared for his success. The result is a riveting, tragic book that goes to the heart of the American dream.

In this remarkable book, the author of Shiloh and Other Stories, In Country, and other award-winning books gives us powerful new stories that capture the restless energy of life in contemporary America. The characters here are travelers and seekers, feeling their way toward, or away from the defining moments of their lives. They roam out into the world to England, Alaska, Texas, Saudi Arabia, or ricochet back home to Kentucky, ceaselessly searching, exploring, testing for limits. I felt strange, says Chrissy in With Jazz, as though all my life I had been zigzagging down a wild trail to this particular place. In Charger, a teenage boy races along the interstate, seeking the father who abandoned him years before. In Rolling into Atlanta, a young woman searches for the kind of authenticity she remembers from her rural childhood. In Proper Gypsies, Nancy deals with the shock of being robbed in London. In The Funeral Side, Sandra comes home to try to fulfill her responsibilities to her family, but yearns to escape again to Alaska and the northern lights that haunt her. Writing in the spare, precise, beautifully nuanced language for which she is famous, Bobbie Ann Mason expands her art here in dramatic and illuminating fashion. These fascinating stories bring to life surprising individuals whose journeys shine a bright light on life as it is lived by many Americans today. Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail is a beautiful book by one of America's finest writers, a book full of drama, humor, and startling insights into the timeless longings of the human heart.

"These stories will last," said Raymond Carver of Shiloh and Other Stories when it was first published, and almost two decades later this stunning fiction debut and winner of the PENHemingway Award has become a modern American classic. In Shiloh, Bobbie Ann Mason introduces us to her western Kentucky people and the lives they forge for themselves amid the ups and downs of contemporary American life, and she poignantly captures the growing pains of the New South in the lives of her characters as they come to terms with feminism, R-rated movies, and video games. "Bobbie Ann Mason is one of those rare writers who, by concentrating their attention on a few square miles of native turf, are able to open up new and surprisingly wide worlds for the delighted reader," said Robert Towers in The New York Review of Books.

The stories in Bobbie Ann Mason's remarkable collection read like poetic transcriptions of day-to-day life. With her keen eye and ear for late twentieth-century popular culture, Mason can render a photograph of a brightly lit supermarket or a bit of wisdom from the Donahue show. This special edition of a beloved local author's work includes a new foreword by George Ella Lyon, Kentucky writer and friend of the author.

The Girl Sleuth is a book for anyone who fondly recalls her late-night adventures inside a bedspread cave with a flashlight, a handful of snitched cookies, and a savvy heroine who has just two chapters left in which to decode the message, find the jewels, unmask the impostor, and then catch the next express to the big city. In this long-out-of-print work, which was first published in 1975, Bobbie Ann Mason examines the girl detective in her various guises through a combination of childhood reminiscences and insights as a fiction writer and observer of American popular culture. Mason ranges in her coverage from the Bobbsey Twins to the glamorous career-girl detectives Vicki Barr, Cherry Ames, and Beverly Gray to her own adolescent favorites—Judy Bolton, Nancy Drew, and Trixie Belden, a farm girl like herself. Mason's personal recollections of a rural youth spent longing for mysteries to solve represent a quintessential American girlhood experience. Mason reveals Nancy Drew ("as cool as Mata Hari and as sweet as Betty Crocker") to be a paradoxical figure: on the one hand a model of independence and courage; on the other, a lady, eternally feminine and firmly devoted to the preservation of middle-class values. The girl sleuths "thrilled us and contented us at the same time," the author writes. Holding up Nancy Drew as a model of "the conventional and the revolutionary in one compact package," Mason shows how the series heroines encouraged young readers to "dream big" and stay open to life's possibilities, dished up antidotes to spoon-fed notions of traditional femininity, and amiably subverted the literary snobbery of child experts, librarians, and book reviewers. Everyone who grew up reading mystery books will enjoy Bobbie Ann Mason's witty, sometimes nostalgic, observations on popular culture, childhood, and the pleasures of reading and writing.

From the acclaimed author of the classics Shiloh and Other Stories and In Country comes a beautifully crafted and profoundly moving novel which follows a woman as she looks back over her life and her first love. Ann Workman is smart but na ve, a misfit who's traveled from rural Kentucky to graduate school in the transformative years of the late 1960s. While Ann fervently seeks higher learning, she wants what all girls yearn for--a boyfriend. But not any boy. She wants the "Real Thing," to be in love with someone who loves her equally. Then Jimmy appears, as if by magic. Although he comes from a very different place, upper-middle class suburban Chicago, he is a misfit too, a rebel who rejects his upbringing and questions everything. Ann and Jimmy bond through music and literature and their own quirkiness, diving headfirst into what seems to be a perfect relationship. But with the Vietnam War looming and the country in turmoil, their future is uncertain. Many years later, Ann recalls this time of innocence--and her own obsession with Jimmy--as she faces another life crisis. Seeking escape from her problems, she tries to imagine where she might be if she had chosen differently all those years ago. What if she had gone to Stanford University, as her mentor had urged, instead of a small school on the East Coast? Would she have been caught up in the Summer of Love and its subsequent dark turns? Or would her own good sense have saved her from disaster? Beautifully written and expertly told, Dear Ann is the wrenching story of one woman's life and the choices she has made. Bobbie Ann Mason captures at once the excitement of youth and the nostalgia of age, and how consideration of the road not taken--the interplay of memory and imagination--can illuminate, and perhaps overtake, our present.

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD From prize-winning author Bobbie Ann Mason, a brilliantly wrought novel about the first woman to give birth to quintuplets in early 1900s America. Set in the apocalyptic atmosphere of 1900--a time when many Americans were looking for signs foretelling the end of the world--Feather Crowns is the story of a young woman who unintentionally creates a national sensation. A farm wife living near the small town of Hopewell, Kentucky, Christianna Wheeler gives birth to the first recorded set of quintuplets in North America. Christie is suddenly thrown into a swirling storm of public attention. Hundreds of strangers descend on her home, all wanting to see and touch the miracle babies. The fate of the babies and the bizarre events that follow their births propel Christie and her husband far from home, on a journey that exposes them to the turbulent pageant of life at the beginning of the modern era. Richly detailed and poignant, Feather Crowns focuses on one woman but opens out ultimately into the chronicle of a time and a people. Written in Bobbie Ann Mason's taut yet lyrical prose, the novel ranges from a peaceful farming community to a fire-and-brimstone revival camp, from traveling shows to the the nation's capital. Moving through the center of it all is Christie, a charming, headstrong, loving woman who struggles heroically to come to terms with the extraordinary events of her long life. Feather Crowns is an American parable of profound resonance. Spellbindingly readable, it is a novel of classic stature that confirmed Bobbie Ann Mason as one of America's most important writers.

PULITZER PRIZE FINALISTFrom acclaimed author Bobbie Ann Mason, her Pulitzer Prize-nominated memoir chronicling three generations of her Kentucky lineage, spanning a century in the life of an American family." Mason gets to the heart of a whole generation.... She can write the hard truth about home, love, loss.... Immensely satisfying." --New York Times Book ReviewPeople love and remember the novels of Bobbie Ann Mason because they ring so true. This dazzling memoir has the same power. In it, Mason tells the story of her own family--a multilayered saga of three generations, their aspirations, their conflicts, and the ties that bound them to one another. Spanning decades, Clear Springs gracefully weaves together the stories of Mason's grandparents, parents, and her own generation. The narrative moves from the sober industriousness of a Kentucky farm to the hippie lifestyle of the countercultural 1960s; from a New York fan magazine to the shock-therapy ward of a mental institution; from a county poorhouse to the set of a Hollywood movie. In the process of recounting her own odyssey--the story of an isolated girl who dreamed of distant places--Mason depicts the changes that have come to family, to women, and to heartland America in the twentieth century. Ultimately, Clear Springs is a heartfelt portrait of an extended family, and a profound affirmation of the importance of family love.

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDFrom prize-winning author Bobbie Ann Mason, a brilliantly wrought novel about the first woman to give birth to quintuplets in early 1900s America. Set in the apocalyptic atmosphere of 1900--a time when many Americans were looking for signs foretelling the end of the world--Feather Crowns is the story of a young woman who unintentionally creates a national sensation. A farm wife living near the small town of Hopewell, Kentucky, Christianna Wheeler gives birth to the first recorded set of quintuplets in North America. Christie is suddenly thrown into a swirling storm of public attention. Hundreds of strangers descend on her home, all wanting to see and touch the "miracle babies." The fate of the babies and the bizarre events that follow their births propel Christie and her husband far from home, on a journey that exposes them to the turbulent pageant of life at the beginning of the modern era. Richly detailed and poignant, Feather Crowns focuses on one woman but opens out ultimately into the chronicle of a time and a people. Written in Bobbie Ann Mason's taut yet lyrical prose, the novel ranges from a peaceful farming community to a fire-and-brimstone revival camp, from traveling shows to the the nation's capital. Moving through the center of it all is Christie, a charming, headstrong, loving woman who struggles heroically to come to terms with the extraordinary events of her long life. Feather Crowns is an American parable of profound resonance. Spellbindingly readable, it is a novel of classic stature that confirmed Bobbie Ann Mason as one of America's most important writers.

Bobbie Ann Mason's debut novel--"a brilliant and moving book... a moral tale that entwines public history with private anguish." --Los Angeles Times Book Review"How Ms. Mason conjures a vivid image of the futility of war and its searing legacy of confusion out of the searching questions or a na ve later generation is nothing short of masterful." --Kansas City Star Samantha "Sam" Hughes is in her senior year of high school in rural Kentucky. Her father, whom she never knew, was killed in Vietnam before she was born. Sam lives with her uncle Emmett, a veteran who appears to be suffering from exposure to Agent Orange. Amidst worrying about her uncle and yearning to figure out who she is and learn about the father she never knew, Sam develops feelings for Tom, one of Emmett's veteran buddies. Tom and Emmett attempt to shield Sam from the truth of what they endured, but she has become convinced that her life is bound to the war in Vietnam. In Country is both a powerful and touching novel of America's ghosts and a beautiful portrayal of a family, not unlike many others, left bruised and twisted by the war. At the time of its publication in 1985, Richard Eder's rave LA Times review concluded: "One of the questions for post-war American literature, dealt with variously by Updike, Cheever, Roth, Salinger and a host of others, is whether the larger capacities of the human spirit can be exercised, so to speak, in a motel room equipped with color TV and a drinks refrigerator. The answers vary; Mason has found her own striking variety of 'yes.'"

Inspired by the wartime experiences of her father-in-law, Bobbie Ann Mason has crafted the haunting and profoundly moving story of an American World War II pilot shot down in Occupied Europe, and his wrenching odyssey of discovery, decades later, as he uncovers the truth about those who helped him escape in 1944. At twenty-three, Marshall Stone was a confident, cocksure U. S. flyboy stationed in England, with several bombing raids in a B-17 under his belt. But when enemy fighters forced his plane to crash-land in a Belgian field during a mission to Germany, Marshall had to rely solely on the kindness of ordinary Belgian and French citizens to help him hide from and evade the Nazis. Decades later, restless and at the end of his career as an airline pilot, Marshall returns to the crash site and finds himself drawn back in time, unable to stop thinking about the people who risked their lives to save Allied pilots like him. Most of all, he is obsessed by the girl in the blue beret, a courageous young woman who protected and guided him in occupied Paris. Framed in spellbinding, luminous prose, Marshall's search for her gradually unfolds, becoming a voyage of discovery that reveals truths about himself and the people he knew during the war. Deeply beautiful and impossible to put down, The Girl in the Blue Beret is an unforgettable story--intimate, affecting, exquisite--of memories, second chances, and one intrepid girl who risked it all for a stranger.