The Morning and the Evening: A Novel

Joan Williams

Dec 2014 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

Finalist for the National Book Award: Joan Williams’s unforgettable first novel is the story of a small Southern town struggling to care for one of its own

In a rundown farmhouse in Mississippi, Jake Darby wakes up one morning to find his world forever changed. His long-suffering mother has died overnight, abandoning forty-year-old Jake, who is mute and, according to his neighbors, not quite right in the head. With no family to take him in, it is up to the townspeople of Marigold to take care of Jake, a grave responsibility that brings out the best—and the worst—of a community in which painful truths are usually hidden from sight. In such a place, even the kindest of acts can lead to the most tragic of outcomes.
 
Heralded as the debut of a major new talent when it was first published in 1961, The Morning and the Evening won the John P. Marquand First Novel Award from the Book-of-the-Month Club and established Joan Williams as a leading voice in Southern literature. Elegant, compassionate, and deeply unsettling, it is a portrait of the human spirit in all of its flawed and intricate beauty, and a tale firmly grounded in reality yet told with all the power of myth.

Ratings and reviews

I love the new trend of re releasing older books again. I believe most of us tend to stroll through the New Release section of the book store or online and do most of our shopping there. Gems like this one are often overlooked. This is an exceptionally well written book with the power and feeling you get from To Kill A Mockingbird and similar Southern Fiction. Only a few today come close to recreating the atmosphere and character depth of these older novels. While centrally a story about a man struggling with his limitations, it is also about a town struggling with acceptance. There are so many moments when you feel the main character will break through only to meet with a wall of outside forces. This is a solely character driven story and they are rendered in amazing drama and detail.

About the author

Joan Williams (1928–2004) was an acclaimed author of short stories and novels, including The Morning and the Evening, a finalist for the National Book Award, and The Wintering, a roman à clef based on her relationship with William Faulkner. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, and educated at Bard College in upstate New York, Williams was greatly influenced by the legacy of her mother’s rural Mississippi upbringing and set much of her fiction in that state. Her numerous honors included the John P. Marquand First Novel Award, a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.