Gerald Gray's Wife and Lily

"What makes King's writing so striking . . . is that she wrote from the inside, but from the perspective of an outsider. . . . Where so many women's authors struggled to close the gap between morals and manners, and thus discover their femininity, King speaks from the gap--often angry, always knowingly. . . . She articulates many of the key social and moral struggles that marked the experience of upper class southern women."--Steven. M. Stowe, Indiana University