The Optimist's Daughter

Summary

A middle-aged woman returns from Chicago to her small Mississippi hometown to care for her ailing father, then stays on after his death to face his much younger second wife and the contents of the family home. Through spare, observant prose Welty examines memory, grief, regional class friction, and the way a single household can hold a whole emotional history. The short novel is widely admired as a model of compression and quiet psychological depth.