Mason, Bobbie Ann

(US, 1940– )

After writing critical books about Vladimir Nabokov and detective fiction, Mason turned to fiction. Her award-winning debut, Shiloh and Other Stories (1983), chronicles the everyday lives of people trying to make sense of a rapidly changing world. Like Shiloh, Mason's first novel, In Country (1987), is set in Kentucky. It movingly depicts a young woman's quest to find out about her father, who was killed in the Vietnam war. Feather Crowns (1994) charts the life of Christianna Wheeler, a tobacco farmer's wife who gives birth to America's first known quintuplets in 1900. Through Christianna's struggle to prevent the world from exploiting her babies, the book explores the growth of American consumerism and the difficulties of resisting it.

Jayne Anne Phillips, E. Annie Proulx  BH