The nickname of the train was the Yellow Dog. Its real name was the Yazoo-Delta. It was a mixed train. The day was the 10th of September, 1923 – afternoon. Laura McRaven, who was nine years old, was on her first journey alone.
Laura McRaven travels down the Delta to attend her cousin Dabney's wedding. At the Fairchild plantation her family envelop her in a tidal wave of warmth, teases and comfort. As the big day approaches, tensions inevitably rise to the surface.
Head of Zeus, an Apollo Library book * Fiction
07 Apr 2016 * 336pp * £10 * 9781784971670
REVIEWS
'She does voices, she mimics, she has a sensitivity to the absurdities of language. She's a performer who simply didn't choose to perform upon a conventional stage. Her work often doesn't seem funny, but then is funny under the surface – sometimes even quite grave stories'
Richard Ford
'The portrait she gives us is nothing short of wonderful, and the way she gets hold of the particular quality of Southern speech, with its nuances, obliquities, and special kind of humour, is a minor triumph'
New Yorker
'One of the most original, subtle and magical of American writers. Her prose is incandescent and her vision supremely humane'
Joyce Carol Oates
'Exquisite account of a hazy, troubling Mississippi summer in the 1920s ... I can't imagine why I haven't read it before'
Tessa Hadley, Guardian Summer Reads
Author
Eudora Welty
Eudora Alice Welty (1909–2001) was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards including the Order of the South. Her house in Jackson, Mississippi has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public as a house museum.
Introduction
Michael Schmidt is the founder of Carcanet Press and the general editor of PN Review. He was until recently Professor of Poetry at the University of Glasgow. He has also been Writer in Residence at St John's College, Cambridge.
ALSO BY Michael Schmidt
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