The Hard Blue Sky: A Novel

Shirley Ann Grau

Apr 2012 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

“An arresting and beautifully written novel” about a young woman who yearns to escape her life in Louisiana, by a Pulitzer Prize–winning author (The New York Times).

West of New Orleans among a few small Gulf islands lies the Isle aux Chiens, a tiny, impoverished strip of land burdened by intolerable heat and roaming packs of wild dogs. Here a handful of Creole families eke out a meager existence by fishing the Gulf waters. Such is the fate of Al Landry and his seventeen-year-old daughter, Annie. All Annie has ever known is the wild sea, but she longs for other people and places, including the glamor of life in the Big Easy. When a cruel, handsome sailing boat pilot from the city passes through, he kindles Annie’s fantasies for a life beyond the island. Soon, the young girl faces a decision: remain planted in the predictable life she has always known, or toss it all aside for her dreamed-of adventure.
 
Elsewhere on the island, eighteen-year-old Henry Livaudais disappears on a hunting expedition, sparking a feud with a neighboring settlement of Yugoslavian oystermen. As the summer heat intensifies, his father tries to discover why Henry left the isolated fishing settlement.
 
By the author of The Keepers of the House, this novel follows two teenagers on the cusp of adulthood as they look for an escape from their Southern homes. The National Book Award–shortlisted author establishes herself as the master chronicler of bayou life in this debut novel that captures the complexities of the Deep South’s most impoverished corners.
 
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Shirley Ann Grau, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.
 

 

About the author

Shirley Ann Grau (1929–2020) was the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist of nine novels and short story collections set primarily in her native South. Grau was raised in Alabama and Louisiana, and many of her novels document the broad social changes of the Deep South during the twentieth century, particularly as they affected African Americans. Grau’s first novel, The Hard Blue Sky (1958), about the descendants of European pioneers living on an island off the coast of Louisiana, established her as a master of vivid description, of both characters and locale, a style she maintained throughout her career. Her public profile rose during the civil rights movement, when her dynastic novel Keepers of the House (1964), which dealt with race relations in Alabama, earned her the Pulitzer Prize.