At “Rowan Oak,” his home in Oxford, Mississippi, William Faulkner told ghost stories to the children in his family, including his only niece, Dean Faulkner Wells, who has recounted these stories in The Ghosts of Rowan Oak. Though the world knew Faulkner as a Nobel Prize-winning author, Dean and her cousins called him “Pappy,” and knew him as the teller of tales tragic, sorrowful, funny and sometimes terrifying. Presented here are the haunting and heartbreaking story of Judith, the family ghost or poltergeist, the chilling tale of the Werewolf, and the macabre story of the Hound. This school edition of The Ghosts of Rowan Oak contains a Study Guide including an illustrated short biography of William Faulkner, questions for class discussion, and vocabulary lists. Introduction by Willie Morris. (For middle grade students.)
In the 1940s William Faulkner entertained his daughter Jill, his niece Dean and his step-granddaughter Vicki with ghost stories he told them at Rowan Oak, his antebellum home in Oxford, Mississippi. Dean Faulkner Wells has recounted three stories that her uncle told and shares with a new generation of young Faulkner readers what it was like to listen to stories told by the man she knew as “Pappy.” Each story has its own setting¾Halloween, a hay ride, a rainy day at Rowan Oak¾as well as a detailed description of the history of Rowan Oak and of William Faulkner as family man and storyteller who enjoyed the company of children. In his introduction Willie Morris writes, “In these tales about the lovely and doomed Judith, and the werewolf, and the baying hound, Dean Faulkner Wells has recaptured the sorcery of her uncle’s story-telling, and the mood and texture of those vanished moments when he told them.” This school edition of The Ghosts of Rowan Oak contains a Study Guide including an illustrated short biography of William Faulkner, questions for class discussion, and vocabulary lists. Introduction by Willie Morris. (For middle grade students.)
Reviews:
All three stories are deliciously frightening and told with moving simplicity.
— Southern Living
Dean Faulkner Wells describes Rowan Oak and the Pappy of her childhood with a rare eye and with the Faulkner care and genius for words, and with the emotion of love.
— American Bookseller
There is much of old Pappy himself in (these) pages. The language may not be precisely his, but the characters and the haunted feeling of the Southern countryside certainly are.
— The Denver Post
Dean Wells’ great respect and love for her “Pappy” shows through in her Rowan Oak chapter and in brief forewords and afterwords to the three ghost stories.
— Southern World
This book is Dean Faulkner Wells’ way of sharing her memories of “Pappy” with children everywhere.
— Detroit Free Press