Fair and Tender Ladies

By Lee Smith (novelist)

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Fair and Tender Ladies is a 1988 epistolary novel by Lee Smith. Told through letters written over some seventy years, it follows Ivy Rowe from her girlhood on a poor farm in the mountains of southwest Virginia to old age. Ivy writes to family, friends, lovers and a long-lost pen pal about hard times, love, motherhood, loss and her deep tie to the Appalachian land, revealing, letter by letter, a fierce, funny and unforgettable woman's whole life.

Recommended by 1 person