A Devil and a Good Woman, Too: The Lives of Julia Peterkin

by Susan Millar Williams

The first full-scale biography of the South Carolina writer and winner of the Pulitzer Prize follows her pioneering work as a chronicler of the collapse of Southern plantation life and its effect on African Americans. UP.

343 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1997

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I've read a worse book I don't remember it. This is a tedious, chronologic and dry account of an unpleasant female writer who exploited the African Americans who lived on her plantation, and was given a Pulitzer for the dubious reason that she was the first to describe white southern life from the inside. I only read it because it was a book group selection.

[Jean Kilby · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written--and timely--look into the rebuilding of the South during the 1920s, this biography of Pulitzer Prize winner Julia Peterkin is at times both hilarious and heart-wrenching (I'll never forget the loose toes floating in the tub of water).

[K Krause · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only scholarly biography of a Pulitzer-winning, Southern novelist. Peterkin won a Pulitzer in 1929 for her novel, Scarlet Sister Mary.

[Jean Kilby · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written--and timely--look into the rebuilding of the South following the American Civil War, this biography of Pulitzer Prize winner Julia Peterkin captures a civil rights movement often overlooked--the push to secure the rights of newly freed slaves. A DEVIL AND A GOOD WOMAN, TOO, which is at times both hilarious and heart-wrenching (I'll never forget the loose toes floating in the tub of water), reads like a novel.

[Kathleen Fair · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not the best written biography, but my desire to know more about this woman who played such a role in the history of the area kept me reading.