Optimist's Daughter

"[This novel] which first appeared in The New Yorker of March 15, 1969, is a miracle of compression, the kind of book, small in scope but profound in its implications, that rewards a lifetime of work....Its story has all those qualities peculiar to the finest short novels: a theme that vibrates with overtones, suspense and classical inevitability....[Laurel's] childhood days at Becky's mountaintop house in West Virginia, which recall Becky's childhood as well, are the most beautiful passages in the Welty canon, extraordinary passages in an extraordinary book....The best book Eudora Welty has ever written, [this] is a long goodbye in a very short space not only to the dead but to delusion and to sentiment as well."Optimist's Daughter, with ISBN 9780394555874 and ISBN 0394555872.