Norma Watkins

Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, I saw this in action. One man, the centre of his own world, and the necessarily decorative “little woman” to drape on his arm. She had very little power of her own, hiding and conniving sometimes to make some sort of permissible life for herself. Gaslighting and manipulation aplenty. Modern women must find this alternatively endearing and frustrating book almost unbelievable, but it did really happen in those times.

I read this book after seeing it reviewed in The St. Petersburg Times. It has been compared to The Help and to Anna Jean Mayhew's book, Dry Grass in August, which are both novels.
Actually, I thought The Last Resort, a memoir of growing up in the family hotel in rural Mississippi and young adulthood in Jackson, MS, during the Civil Rights struggles, is better than both...and breathtakingly honest.