The author of The Night of the Hunter never went far in spirit from his West Virginia roots. In addition to his ten highly praised novels, Davis Grubb published numerous short stories in a variety of magazines. Like The Night of the Hunter, many of these have an atmosphere of dark forces behind the everyday life of a small mining town in the Appalachian mountains. Here is a selection of stories that brings to vivid life Davis Grubb's inimitable characters and his West Virginia in the thirties and forties. He has created an American town, with its eccentrics and heroes, its quirky farmers, its hardened miners, its free-ranging children. There is sly and earthy humor in these tales, and a spectrum of human emotion. *You Never Believe Me *Fifty of Blue *Bitter Almonds *The Stainless Steel Savior *And Presently He Died *The Night Watchman's Daughter *Long Pants *Every Road I Walked Along *The Last of the Chiefs *Return of Verge Likens *The Crest of '36 *The Last Days of Poncho Pete *Magenta Blue *Picayune Pete and the Ninety-Proof Cow *Green Thumb *Checker-Playing Fool *The Horsehair Trunk *Tally Vengeance
Author
From Wikipedia Born in Moundsville, West Virginia, Grubb wanted to combine his creative skills as a painter with writing and as such attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. However, his color blindness was a handicap he could not overcome and he gave up on painting to dedicate himself to writing fiction. He did, however, make a number of drawings and sketches during the course of his career, some of which were incorporated into his writings. In 1940, Grubb moved to New York City where he worked at NBC radio as a writer while using his free time to write short stories. In the mid 1940s he was successful in selling several short stories to major magazines and in the early 1950s he started writing a full length novel. Influenced by accounts of economic hardship by depression-era Americans that his mother had seen first hand as a social worker, Grubb produced a dark tale that mixed the plight of poor children and adults with that of the evil inflicted by others. The Night of the Hunter became an instant bestseller and was voted a finalist for the 1955 National Book Award. That same year, the book was made into a motion picture that is now regarded as a classic. Deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Grubb went on to write a further nine novels and several collections of short stories. His 1969 novel Fools' Parade would also be made into a motion picture starring James Stewart. Some of Grubb's short stories were adapted for television by Alfred Hitchcock and by Rod Serling for his Night Gallery series. Grubb died in New York City in 1980. His novel Ancient Lights was published posthumously in 1982, and St. Martins Press published 18 of his short stories in a book collection titled You Never Believe Me and Other Stories. His longtime canine companion was a Lhasa Apso named Rowdy Charlie.
