Just Doll

She is only seventeen when she marries into a world of privilege, mystery, heartache and passion . . . Doll Baxter is barely grown when she weds wealthy older landowner Daniel Staten in order to save her family's impoverished farm in post-Civil War Georgia. Over the decades that follow, Doll and Daniel struggle to resolve the tensions between them. Both are strong-willed; both are rooted to the fertile southern soil. The twists and turns of their lives together influence the fates of many around them, both black and white. "It seemed that people were just passing through only long enough for you to get to loving them, then gone as if they never were, or were somebody you had dreamed up for the sole purpose of bringing suffering. Love was dangerous suddenly; a child or husband might be with you one day and gone the next and leave you gnawing on the corner of your pillow to keep from crying out questions in the middle of the night. Then morning, there was always morning." Janice Daugharty's 1997 novel, EARL IN THE YELLOW SHIRT, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She is the author of seven acclaimed novels and two short story collections. She serves as writer-in-residence at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, in Tifton, Georgia.