Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail

When Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail was first published in 1983, it was named the best first novel of the year by USA Today. Set in the tobacco country of North Carolina in 1937, the story is told through the voice of Roxy Walston, the 20-year-old daughter of the town undertaker, wife of a struggling tobacco farmer, and mother of a two-year-old. When Jack Ruffin, a wanderer looking for work, is sent out to the farm to help Roxy's husband, things are set in place that change Roxy's life forever.

"With this absorbing first novel we meet an author richly endowed and sure of her way. She puts to her use an honest, accurate and selective eye, a dramatic sense very much alive, and best of all a sensitivity to the pull and charm and magnetism, even fatality, of human characters whom life has thrown together in their time and place." Eudora Welty

"A masterpiece, a jewel, an utterly brilliant piece of work." Los Angeles Times

"Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail sets us on fire." New York Times

"A breathtakingly accomplished piece of work." Washington Post

Author Bio: Louise Shivers is writer-in-residence at Augusta State University. She lives in Augusta, Georgia.