The Scarlet Thread

by Doris Betts

The Scarlet Thread, by Doris Betts, was first published by Harper & Row in 1964 and won the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction. This 2013 Press 53 Classics edition features a new introduction by Robert Morgan and closing essays of remembrance by Sally Buckner and Marjorie Hudson.

426 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Doris Betts (1932-2012), former Chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, wrote nine novels and three collections of short stories, including The Gentle Insurrection, The Sharp Teeth of Love, Souls Raised from the Dead, which won the Southern Book Award, and Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Betts taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for 35 years. She was a Guggenheim Fellow and received a medal from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Reviews

[Renee Wolcott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doris Betts was my undergraduate mentor, a tough and compassionate creative writing teacher full of love, courage, and steely intellect. This novel captures all of those qualities, and I found it impossible to put down. Set in the newly industrial South at the turn of the 20th century, it riffs on the strength and power of imagination, the force of sibling rivalry, and the damage a single angry man can do. Read it.