The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
by Carson McCullers
Summary
In a small Georgia mill town, deaf and mute John Singer becomes an unlikely confidant to a group of isolated townspeople, including a restless teenage girl, a Black doctor consumed by injustice, and a drifting labor organizer, each of whom projects their own hopes onto a man who cannot truly answer them. McCullers, only twenty three when the novel appeared, writes with remarkable empathy about loneliness, longing, and the failure of communication across race and class lines in the segregated South. The novel established her as one of the most gifted American writers of her generation.
Historical Context & Significance
The 1941 Pulitzer for fiction went to no book at all that year, after the board overruled its own jury's recommendation of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. McCullers's remarkable debut received no major prize despite the immediate critical acclaim that greeted it.