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by Eudora Welty (Author)
A vivid and charming portrait of a large southern family, the Fairchilds, who live on a plantation in the Mississippi delta. The story, set in 1923, is exquisitely woven from the ordinary events of family life, centered around the visit of a young relative, Laura McRaven, and the family's preparations for her cousin Dabney's wedding.
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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.
So begins Delta Wedding, Eudora Welty's portrait of a large and clamorous Southern family living on their plantation in the Mississippi Delta, and into whose midst Laura McRaven, whose mother has just died, is thrust. When Laura arrives, the Fairchilds are preparing for the marriage of Dabney, not the oldest but the prettiest of the Fairchild girls. Drama leads to drama, revelation to revelation. The result is a sometimes riotous portrait of a Southern family and the motherless child who learns to become one of them. Eudora Welty's first novel remains an American classic.
"By all odds the best thing [Eudora Welty] has written."
--The Atlantic
"Presents the essence of the Deep South and does it with infinite finesse."
--The Christian Science Monitor
"The portrait she gives us . . . is nothing short of wonderful, and the way she gets hold the particular quality of Southern speech, with its nuances, obliquities, and special kind of humor, is a minor triumph."--The New Yorker
Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was born in Jackson, Mississippi. She worked as a photographer during the Depression and published her first book, a collection of short stories, in 1941. In addition to short fiction, Welty wrote novels, novellas, essays, and reviews, and was the winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. By the time of her death in 2001, Welty had established herself as one of the most important and beloved American writers of the twentieth century.
