Fair and Tender Ladies

by Lee Smith, copyright 1988, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 0-399-13382-8

A series of letters written by Ivy Rowe that chronicle her life in the Appalachians of Virginia from when she is a young girl until her old age. Despite her primitive writing style – which evolves even as she does – she is a writer throughout, compelled to write. choosing the recipients of her letters according to the intimacy of her thoughts.

She writes with an indefatigable spirit of her social and sexual awakening, of girlish observations of the strange behavior of adults, of love and loss, of fatigue and escape from adult responsibility and drudgery, of education and a desire for the world outside, of her unbreakable bond with her mountain home, and above all of enduring love of and for family.