Goodlife, Mississippi

by Eileen Saint Lauren

Overview

"Goodlife, Mississippi" chronicles the first twelve years--1950 to 1962--of Mary "Myra" Boone, a questionably biracial young Southern girl of the sixties. The setting of the novel begins in Meridian, Mississippi, and then moves onto the fictional city of Goodlife. Eileen Saint Lauren captures the experience of growing up in "pockets" of a regressive and repressive Southern culture. The novel is truth mixed with magical realism achieved by the constant threading of the ordinary with the extraordinary, supernatural, and the sublime.

A sequence of linked stories comprises events in Myra Boone's life. Myra persists through extreme adversities because of her dream of meeting Ray Charles Robinson and her natural sense of place in the grand scheme of life: her true calling. Though her scars--inside and out--will remain, she emerges a young woman of compassion with a self-forged faith in the underlying goodness of the universe and her value in the world. And in having Myra Boone prevail, Saint Lauren leaves the reader contemplating the resilience of the human soul far beyond the pages of her novel.

"Goodlife, Mississippi," includes a Study Guide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798986196305
Publisher:	Eileen Saint Lauren Books
Publication date:	11/01/2022
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Eileen Saint Lauren is a natural-born writer with a pure and original voice who in her debut novel, "Goodlife, Mississippi," embraces the rural South of the fifties and sixties where she witnessed segregation. She provokes the reader to contemplate an understanding and tolerance of people whose life experiences and perceptions appear outside the norm though are very real. "Goodlife, Mississippi's" timeless voices of every color and social class both together reflect the message of compassion, forgiveness, and love.Eileen Saint Lauren was born in Hattiesburg and raised in a once two red-light town, Petal, Mississippi. She is an award-winning photo journalist and news and feature writer who worked early in her career as a commentator for Nebraska Public Radio and at Smith College Museum of Art. After graduating from Jones College in Ellisville Mississippi, with an Associate of Arts degree in journalism, she continued her education at he University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. She then continued on with her education in creative writing at The Washington Center, Duke University, Kansas Newman College's, The Milton Center, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She divides her writing time between Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Madison, Mississippi.Eileen Saint Lauren was blind for three years due to back-to-back retina detachments at an early age. Although she did not regain her full sight back, she is functional. She is visually disadvantaged.