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A Long and Happy Life | Introduction

Upon its first publication in 1962, A Long and Happy Life announced the arrival of a major literary talent. Reynolds Price’s first novel, published just a few years after his graduation from college, is a tale told in the southern Gothic tradition, regarding the sorrows of a young woman, Rosacoke Mustian, who tries to find love in an obscure rural town. Her long-term boyfriend, Wesley Beavers, is mysterious to her, showing Rosacoke enough interest to make her feel that they might have a true bond but also flirting with other women and ignoring her to such an extent that she often wonders if he knows her at all. Price tells this story with an exacting eye for detail and a firm control of his characters’ emotions as they come to grips with the births and deaths that control the courses of their lives. He creates a very specific geographical location, a countryside where whites and blacks, poor and rich, know each other and live together as neighbors, and where the surrounding forest is still wild enough to raise the sense of wonder in people who have known it all their lives. Since the publication of A Long and Happy Life, Reynolds Price has distinguished himself as a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and playwright. While all of his works have been important to the American literary scene, this novel remains one of his most significant contributions.

A Long and Happy Life Summary

Chapter 1
A Long and Happy Life takes place in rural North Carolina. It begins in July, with the novel’s protagonist, Rosacoke Mustian, riding to a funeral on the back of a motorcycle driven by Wesley Beavers, her on-and-off boyfriend of six years. The funeral is for Mildred Sutton. Mildred played with Rosacoke’s family when they were all little, but recently the two young women had not seen much of each other. Mildred died giving birth to a baby, having never told anyone who the child’s father was. Rosacoke is embarrassed to ride to the church on a loud motorcycle, but Wesley sees “no reason to change to a car for a Negro funeral.” During the ceremony, he stays outside the church, tuning the motorcycle loudly. Rosacoke is the only white person at the ceremony. Wesley rides away during the funeral, and when Rosacoke leaves she has to walk home.

In the woods, she stops at a clear water spring that she recalls finding when she and Mildred and others were playing as children. Wesley finds her there, thinking about her life, and convinces her to go to the church picnic with him.

Rosacoke’s family is at the picnic by Mason’s Lake. Her brother Milo swims with Wesley and with Willie Duke Aycock, a buxom beauty contest winner who has had a crush on Wesley since childhood; Milo’s wife Sissie, pregnant with their first child, feels sick and is cared for by Rosacoke’s mother; Baby Sister, the youngest of the clan, pretends to baptize the many children of another family, the Guptons; and Macey Gupton’s wife, Marise, tends to the couple’s fourth child. Wesley explains that he will be going to Norfolk, Virginia, where he was in the navy, to sell motorcycles. He jokes around about other women he has known. Milo jokes that Rosacoke could keep Wesley committed to her by becoming pregnant.

After everyone leaves the picnic and night is falling, Wesley lures Rosacoke into the woods, pretending that he is looking for a spring to drink from. He tells her that Willie Duke Aycock will be going to Norfolk when he does because she has a job... » Complete A Long and Happy Life Summary