Every Day by the Sun
A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
In Every Day by the Sun, Dean Faulkner Wells recounts the story of the Faulkners of Mississippi, whose legacy includes pioneers, noble and ignoble war veterans, three never-convicted murderers, the builder of the first railroad in north Mississippi, the founding president of a bank, an FBI agent, four pilots (all brothers), and a Nobel Prize winner, arguably the most important American novelist of the twentieth century. She also reveals wonderfully entertaining and intimate stories and anecdotes about her family—in particular her uncle William, or “Pappy,” with whom she shared colorful, sometimes utterly frank, sometimes whimsical, conversations and experiences.
This deeply felt memoir explores the close relationship between Dean’s uncle and her father, Dean Swift Faulkner, a barnstormer killed at age twenty-eight during an air show four months before she was born. It was William who gave his youngest brother an airplane, and after Dean’s tragic death, William helped to raise his niece. He paid for her education, gave her away when she was married, and maintained a unique relationship with her throughout his life.
From the 1920s to the early civil rights era, from Faulkner’s winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature to his death in 1962, Every Day by the Sun explores the changing culture and society of Oxford, Mississippi, while offering a rare glimpse of a notoriously private family and an indelible portrait of a national treasure.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 2010, Wells, William Faulkner's niece, became the oldest surviving Faulkner and found herself alone with firsthand memories of the long-deceased people that shaped and supported the literary legend. After the death of her father months before she was born, Wells's uncles, including the Nobel-prize winning author, became important figures in her life. William or "pappy" took Wells under his wing, paying for her education and participating in her wedding. Wells remembers sailing excursions where William would allow Wells and her cousin to sip his stout-champagne mixture if they could guess the author of his poetry recitations. In these reminiscences, by turns humorous and tedious, Wells focuses mostly on her relationship with her famous uncle, but also draws upon previously unseen letters and other archival material to recreate a portrait the Faulkner family and their rapscallion legacy, which includes ties to thieves, adulterers, killers, racists, and liars. Readers will likely be familiar with many of these tales about William Faulkner, as Wells leans heavily on Joel Williamson's William Faulkner and Southern History and Joseph Blotner's definitive Faulkner biography to complement her own recollections.
