Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

Faulkner and Eudora Welty wrote about poor southern whites from a bemused distance. In Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison writes from her own cruel South Carolina beginnings. Poverty and humiliation drive the men of the Boatwright clan to drink and violence, and their women to endless grief. Twelve-year-old Bone Boatwright survives by leaning on the love of her aunts, the solace of gospel music, and the same ferocious intelligence that shapes this powerful first novel, a current contender for the National Book award in fiction. A