FFB-A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE, Raynolds Price

 

Published in the sixties, I read this book in 1988. It was Price's first novel, published in the sixties, and immediately launched a fine career. 

From the LA TIMES:

 Reynolds Price’s first novel, “A Long and Happy Life,” originally published in 1962, recounted--or, better, evoked--the back-country courtship of the young Rosacoke Mustian and Wesley Beavers. Beginning with “Wesley’s impulsive and short-lived abandonment of Rosa at her friend’s funeral, encompassing their awkward sexual initiation, the novel culminated with Wesley’s decision to do the right thing by the girl he’d made pregnant. A quarter century later, it remains a nearly perfect novella. Every page declares the open senses and curious heart of an enormously gifted young writer.