The Last Girls

Lee Smith

Algonquin Books, Jan 1, 2002 - Fiction - 384 pages

On a beautiful June day in 1965, a dozen girls-classmates at a picturesque Blue Ridge women's college-launched their homemade raft (inspired by Huck Finn's) on a trip down the Mississippi. It's Girls A-Go-Go Down the Mississippi read the headline in the Paducah, Kentucky, paper.

Thirty-five years later, four of those "girls" reunite to cruise the river again. This time it's on the luxury steamboat, The Belle of Natchez, and there's no publicity. This time, when they reach New Orleans, they'll give the river the ashes of a fifth rafter-beautiful Margaret ("Baby") Ballou.

Revered for her powerful female characters, here Lee Smith tells a brilliantly authoritative story of how college pals who grew up in an era when they were still called "girls" have negotiated life as "women." Harriet Holding is a hesitant teacher who has never married (she can't explain why, even to herself). Courtney Gray struggles to step away from her Southern Living-style life. Catherine Wilson, a sculptor, is suffocating in her happy third marriage. Anna Todd is a world-famous romance novelist escaping her own tragedies through her fiction. And finally there is Baby, the girl they come to bury-along with their memories of her rebellions and betrayals.

THE LAST GIRLS is wonderful reading. It's also wonderfully revealing of women's lives-of the idea of romance, of the relevance of past to present, of memory and desire.

Contents

• Mile 736 Memphis Tennessee Friday 5799 1645 hours: 1
• Mile 736 Memphis Tennessee Friday 5799 1900 hours: 23
• Mile 736 Memphis Tennessee Friday 5799 2210 hours: 38
• Mile 736 Memphis Tennessee Saturday 5899 1400 hours: 62
• Mile 6745 Harbert Point Light Sunday 5999 0710 hours: 82
• Mile 664 Prairie Point Towhead Sunday 5999 0800 hours: 89
• Mile 5974 Montgomery Point Sunday 5999 1600 hours: 101
• Mile 585 Rosedale Bend Sunday 5999 1700 hours: 109
• Mile 516 Fanny Bullit Towhead Sunday 5999 2200 hours: 133
• Mile 4372 Vicksburg Mississippi Monday 51099 0500 hours: 148
• Mile 4372 Vicksburg Mississippi Monday 51099 0900 hours: 183
• Mile 4372 Vicksburg Mississippi Monday 51099 1015 hours: 188
• Mile 4372 Vicksburg Mississippi Monday 51099 1600 hours: 206
• Mile 4357 I20 Highway Bridge Monday 51099 1920 hours: 210
• Mile 3642 Natchez Mississippi Tuesday 51199 0600 hours: 216
• Mile 3642 Natchez Mississippi Tuesday 51199 1335 hours: 227
• Mile 3642 Natchez Mississippi Tuesday 51199 1205 hours: 247
• Mile 3642 Natchez Mississippi Tuesday 51199 1810 hours: 255
• Mile 2294 Baton Rouge Louisiana Wednesday 51299 1035 hours: 257
• Mile 2294 Baton Rogue Louisiana Wednesday 51299 2300 hours: 266
• Mile 2655 St Francisville Louisiana Thursday 51399 0842 hours: 279
• Mile 2655 St Francisville Louisiana Thursday 51399 1015 hours: 292
• Mile 1551 Vacherie Louisiana Friday 51499 1200 hours: 317
• Mile 1392 Dutch Bayou Louisiana Friday 51499 1400 hours: 326
• Mile 1280 Bonnet Carre Louisiana Friday 51499 1640 hours: 339
• Mile 1302 Killona Landing Friday 51499 1700 hours: 342
• Mile 1090 Waggaman Light Friday 51499 2100 hours: 347
• Acknowledgments: 383

About the author

Lee Smith is a novelist, short story writer, and educator. She was born in 1944 in Grundy, Virginia. Smith attended Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia. In her senior year at Hollins, Smith entered a Book-of-the-Month Club contest, submitting a draft of a novel called The Last Day the Dog Bushes Bloomed. The book, one of 12 entries to receive a fellowship, was published in 1968. Smith wrote reviews for local papers and continued to write short stories. Her first collection of short stories, Cakewalk, was published in 1981. Smith taught at North Carolina State University. Her novel, Oral History, published in 1983, was a Book-of-the-Month Club featured selection. She has received two O. Henry Awards, the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction, the North Carolina Award for Fiction, the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Award, and the Academy Award in Literature presented by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Last Girls; SMITH, LEE
• Author: Lee Smith
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Algonquin Books, 2002
• ISBN: 1565124057, 9781565124059
• Length: 384 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General