Reader Meet Writer: Lee Smith | Blue Marlin

New York Times best-selling author Lee Smith brings her masterful storytelling magic to this jewel of a novella that follows Jenny, an adventurous 13-year-old, down to Key West for a patched-up family vacation following the discovery of her father’s affair.

At the Blue Marlin Motel, Jenny, her beautiful socialite mother, and chastened father share their sunny days with movie stars who are in town to film Operation Petticoat. This story—though it travels miles away from the Appalachia that is Smith’s home ground—represents this iconic writer at her very best: sharp characterizations, wry humor, perfect pitch, and a profound understanding of human nature.

LEE SMITH began writing stories at the age of nine and selling them for a nickel apiece. Since then, she has written seventeen works of fiction, including Fair and Tender Ladies, Oral History, and, most recently, Guests on Earth. She has received many awards, including the North Carolina Award for Literature and an Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; her novel The Last Girls was a New York Times bestseller as well as winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with her husband, the writer Hal Crowther.