Welty’s first full-length novel, Delta Wedding, is the next feature for the Welty at Home Virtual Book Club. Beginning October 4, the weekly noon to 1 p.m. CST discussion programs will be led by Suzanne Marrs for 10 weeks, excluding the week of Thanksgiving. Published in 1946, the book is set in the Mississippi Delta in 1923 and recounts the Fairchild family’s experiences in the week prior to the wedding of Dabney Fairchild and Troy Flavin, the family overseer. The observations of Laura McRaven, a nine-year-old Fairchild cousin, are especially interesting.
Pages numbers in the schedule below reference Delta Wedding‘s publication in the Library of America volume of Welty’s Complete Novels. It is available for purchase in the Welty Education and Visitors Center gift shop as is the latest edition of Delta Wedding with an introduction by Anne Tyler.
- Oct 4 – Week 1 – Chapter 1 (pp 91-115)
- Oct 11 – Week 2 – Chapter 2 (pp 116-141)
- Oct 18 – Week 3 – Chapter 3 (pp 142-179)
- Oct 25 – Week 4 – Chapter 4 (pp 180-206)
- Nov 1 – Week 5 – Chapter 5 Section 1-3 (pp 207-232)
- Nov 8 – Week 6 – Chapter 5 Section 4-6 (pp 232-259)
- Nov 15 – Week 7 – Chapter 5 Section 7-9 (pp 260-286)
- Nov 22 – *Off for Thanksgiving week*
- Nov 29 – Week 8 – Chapter 6 (pp 287-312)
- Dec 6 – Week 9 – Chapter 7 (pp 313-336)
- Dec 13 – Week 10 – Discussion of whole novel