The Ponder Heart: 410 (VMC) - Tapa blanda

Edna Earle's Uncle Daniel Ponder is quite a character in the town of Clay, Mississippi: he carries a Stetson, dresses fit to kill in a snow white suit and is as good as gold - everyone will admit that. But the trouble with Uncle Ponder is he's as rich, as Croesus and a great deal too generous. He gave Edna Earle a hotel, and once he even tried to give away his own lot in a cemetery. But when his first marriage to Miss 'Teacake' Magee didn't work out, he needed someone else to give things to. So he married seventeen -year-old Bonnie Dee Peacock from a poor backwoods family who 'could cut hair and looked as though a good gust of wind might carry her off'. She was carried off, but not by the wind - and the result, related in Edna Earle's rattling tongue, is a masterpiece of comic absurdity:

Eudora Welty was born in 1908 in Jackson, Mississippi, which is still her home. One of America's most distinguished writers, she has published five novels and as many volumes of short stories. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.