Sue Grafton: Keziah Dane (UK 1975)

From the Publisher:
Since her husband died in the flood that drowned their town Keziah Dane has lived on the brink of poverty with her sons and daughters. Into their tightly-knit family comes Web, a crafty, lusting vagrant who insinuates himself into Keziah's confidence. He uses her trust to disguise his crude attempts to rape her elder daughter, who defends herself by smashing his skull.

Web's body is dumped in the murky depths of Drowntown, but his death brings unexpected benefits to the Danes.

Sue Grafton's excellent first novel is a remarkable story of courage and compassion that makes compelling reading.

Sue Grafton: Keziah Dane. A Novel. London: Sphere, 1975, ISBN: 0722139845, 188 p., 45p.

Sue Grafton: Keziah Dane (USA 1967)

From the Publisher:
Keziah Dane is a kind of woman few of us have ever had the good fortune to encounter in life-and an even rarer person to meet in the pages of the novels of our time -- -a stark, soft-spoken, strangely beautiful woman who stands staunch and invincible in the face of odds that would defeat a lesser spirit.

Two years before the story begins, a flood has destroyed the houses and gardens and swept away the lives of most of the people in the small town where the Danes once lived. Keziah's husband and eldest son were among those who perished. Now she and her four remaining sons and two daughters are clinging precariously to existence, living in an old abandoned pleasure-boat mud-anchored in a dry riverbed. Their only legacy is everyday, unremitting poverty, hunger and cold, and the dubious chance of tomorrow being any better. The two older brothers, Ezra and Matthias, do what they can to provide enough money for the family's barest necessities, but in a way they suffer more than the younger children, particularly Matthias who feels that he cannot ask the girl he loves to marry him and share the only kind of life he can offer. Nevertheless, bulwarked by Keziah's love and strength, they are a close-knit, happy family.

Then a stranger comes aboard their houseboat and makes himself at home, a Mr. Web who claims to be a "traveling preacher from the church of the true hearts." Actually, he is proud of his ability to "sucker from any fool what he wants: whisky, cash, room and board, a good lay." The children instinctively are frightened by his overtures and the stench of evil that he emanates, but Keziah can't find it in her heart to send him packing. Ironically, it is Web's sick mind and his avarice that open up to the Danes a totally unexpected bright future, and prove that Keziah's staunch conviction that "things may change" is indeed quite true.

SUE GRAFTON was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and received her B.A. from the University of Louisville. She is twenty-six years old, and lives in Santa Barbara, California, with her husband and three children.

Sue Grafton: Keziah Dane. A Novel. New York: Macmillan, 1967, 220 p., $4.95.