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A Family's Affairs (1962)
Black Cloud, White Cloud (1964)
Where the Dreams Cross (1968)
Apostles of Light (1973)
The Rock Cried Out (1979)
A Lifetime Burning (1982)
Magic Carpet and Other Tales (1987)
Can't Quit You Baby (1988)
Truth: Four Stories I Am Finally Old Enough To Tell (1998)
Witnessing (2004)

Mississippian and fellow writer Elizabeth Spencer may have offered the most succinct commentary yet on Ellen Douglas when she wrote, "For all her deceptively quiet manner and muted tone, Miss Douglas's own perception is fierce. If purists complain that novels should not be used to express social problems, let them first dismiss Dickens and Zola; they will have, I think, to come to terms."

Truth is the illusive goal of any competent writer. In the pursuit of truth, and a good story, Douglas has a unique ability to slide a splinter under the fingernail of the reader. Her novels and stories do not overtly herald a social cause or message, but in the everyday act of living, her characters, largely Southern and Mississippians, keep stumbling over the buried bones of deeds and thoughts of the past.

Ellen Douglas was born in Natchez in 1921, was graduated from Ole Miss, and settled in Greenville to start her family. Her friends in Greenville included fellow writers Shelby Foote and Walker Percy. Douglas presently lives in the Belhaven section of Jackson.

In the beginning, truth was not so easy for Ellen Douglas. The dust jacket of her first novel in 1962, "A Family's Affairs" confesses, "Ellen Douglas is the pen name of a new Southern writer." At that tumultuous time in the 1950's and 1960's, Douglas had to weigh the need to be truthful against a Southern tradition that was steeped in myth and not always accurate in the recounting. A pen name protected her identity and allowed her to escape the appearance of impropriety in the decorous South of the time. In Douglas's fourth novel, "A Lifetime Burning" the main character Corinne voices a similar dilemma, "Or, to put it another way, I want to explain everything truthfully and at the same time always be right, always charming, always lovable, always beautiful. Is that too much to ask?"

"A Lifetime Burning" is told through the voice of Corinne, a sixty-two year old female, still passionate, modern, and yearning for a deeply satisfying relationship. Habit may be the best word to describe the stasis that both she and George, her husband, a surgeon, have reached in their long marriage. Both partners, in their later years, stray in unconventional ways.

While the main narrative voice is female, "A Lifetime Burning" is not a woman's novel. An intelligence shines through most of Douglas's characters, an ability to ruminate and self-inspect their own minds and motivations. What is instructive to the reader is that at sixty-two there can still remain an unquenched desire to be needed and deeply loved, and to give the same in return. A lifetime of marriage with all of the motions and semblances of normalcy and affection cannot extinguish a primal burning that is so deep.

In "Truth: Four Stories That I Am Finally Old Enough To Tell," published in 1998, Ellen Douglas, by now identified on the dust jacket by her given name also, Josephine Haxton, is ready to tell four family stories from her early life in Natchez and the Delta. The South that Douglas recalls is largely vanished, and she can reveal secrets simply because she has outlived those in her family that might object.

But memory is far from perfect. Where does memory fail in the search for truth and the novelist, perhaps unwittingly, substitutes fiction for fact? Douglas confides in "Truth: Four Stories I Am Finally Old Enough To Tell" about the slippage of memory over time, "I can't honestly say I'm telling the truth - not for sure - and there is no one left to correct me if I'm wrong." Regardless, the four strong stories that compose this mixture of fiction and non-fiction move well beyond mere anecdote into the deeper terrain of wisdom.

Douglas rises above a regional vernacular to tap into the truth informing all of our lives. Her stories and prose carry a resonance and meaning for any reader, anywhere. Douglas' fierce perception, intelligence, and quiet dignity create a rainbow of acuity and perception that results in a body of work that is among the best of today's American writers.