In the award-winning memoir The Last Resort: Taking the Mississippi Cure, Watkins described growing up at the family hotel and realizing the dark half of the population was being kept in virtual servitude. By the mid ‘60s, married with four children, she feels trapped. A southern lady in a very conservative state was allowed little room for dreams and passion. The book ends with a desperate decision.
In That Woman From Mississippi, Watkins covers the decade that follows. Though she creates a new life in Florida—going to graduate school, becoming the college professor, living with a man she adores—there is a dark underside to paradise, along with an extra load of guilt for women who stray.
IN COMMON
“Find what you love ... and let it kill you”
--Charles Bukowski
In Common, a first novel from award-winning memoirist Norma Watkins (The Last Resort, That Woman from Mississippi), is the story of how much women willingly sacrifice for love.
Lillian Creekmore grows up at her family’s popular rural spa. She successfully runs an entire hotel, yet longs for a husband. Then she meets Will Hughes.
Velma Vernon accepts life on a small, struggling farm until a boy she barely tolerates proposes marriage. To accept means duplicating her parents’ hard life. Alone, she leaves for the city and triumphs, not as a wife, but by being the best at her job. Velma is content until the most beautiful man she has ever seen walks into her office.
This moving and darkly humorous novel follows the intertwined lives of women willing to surrender everything to a man.
“…the great American novel, only this time it’s from a woman’s point of view, and this time it’s set in the South. A significant literary achievement.”
-Michael Hettich, The Micah Mine; To Start an Orchard
WHERE TO BUY THE BOOKS
University Press Mississippi