Eudora Welty

Originally published in The New Yorker in 1954, The Ponder Heart is easily Eudora Welty's most comic novel, a lighthearted burlesque that rivals Caldwell's Tobacco Road for capturing rural idioms, and the novels of Mark Twain for high farce. Edna Earle, a person of large distinction in Clay County, and the talkative owner of the Beulah Hotel, tells the story of her Uncle Daniel Ponder, a local hero whose over-affection for society compels him to give...