The Kneeling Bus

Beverly Coyle

Ticknor & Fields, 1990 - Fiction - 184 pages

The Kneeling Bus depicts Carrie Willis's coming-of-age as a minister's daughter in 1950s Florida. Hilarious and often magical, it chronicles a lifetime of the small shames and deep mortifications felt by a narrator who once dreamed herself into the mission field of the Congo--before she lost her nerve.

Contents

• TAKING MARTHA WITH ME: 1
• THE SEVENTH DAY: 17
• DOCTOR NORMAN VINCENT PEALE: 61

About the author

Beverly Jones Coyle was born August 2, 1946, in Miami, Florida, and is known for her literary criticism, short stories, and novels. After receiving a B.A. from Florida State (1968) and a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska (1974), Beverly Coyle taught English at the University of Newcastle (Australia) and Vassar College (New York). She began writing through an assignment in college. Her first published works were nonfiction on the life and poetry of Wallace Stevens, entitled A Thought to Be Rehearsed: Aphorism in Wallace Stevens' Poetry and Secretaries of the Moon: The Letters of Wallace Stevens and Jose Rodriguez Feo. In the latter, Coyle examines the eleven-year correspondence of Stevens with Cuban critic Feo to uncover a personal aspect. The Kneeling Bus, a loosely woven collection of short stories, was Coyle's first fiction work. It is a memoir of Florida in the 1950s, a time when rural communities prevailed. In a later novel, Coyle writes about an older Floridian, her grandfather who cares for a son stricken by Alzheimer's.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Kneeling Bus
• Author: Beverly Coyle
• Publisher: Ticknor & Fields, 1990
• Original from: the University of California
• Digitized: May 8, 2008
• ISBN: 0899199321, 9780899199320
• Length: 184 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Family Life / General; Fiction / General; Fiction / Short Stories (single author); Fiction / Southern