A Death in the Family

A Death in the Family is a novel by James Agee, published in 1957, two years after his death. It won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is based on the death of Agee's own father in a car accident in 1916. Set in Knoxville, Tennessee, it follows the Follet family in the days after Jay Follet is killed while driving home at night. Told partly through the eyes of six-year-old Rufus, the novel traces grief, faith, and family tension as his mother, relatives, and children try to make sense of the loss.

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Stephen King: “On Writing (Scribner, 2000), "And Furthermore, Part II: A Booklist"”