In typical energetic fashion, Mary Lee explores the themes of her five-volume Beulah Quintet, which traces several families from Cromwell's England to the Kanawha Valley. Entertaining glimpses of her research, lively readings from her memoir of her grandmother Addie.

Examples of scenes from writing:  a rebel in Cromwell's England faces the firing squad, Mother Jones rallies the miners on Cabin Creek in a drunk tank, a guy from the wealthy section of town decks a guy from the creeks.

Personal:  Born Charleston (WV) 1918.  Also lived Kentucky and Florida.  Now living New York.  Married three times, divorced twice. One son.

Publications:  The Love Eaters Harper and (London) Heinemann 1954, The Kiss of Kin Harper and (London) Heinemann 1955, Fight Night on a Sweet Saturday Viking 1964 and (London) Heinemann 1965, The Clam Shell Delacorte and (London) Bodley Head 1971, Blood Tie Houghton Mifflin 1977, Celebration Farrar Straus and (London) Hutchinson 1986, Charley Bland Franklin Center 1989, Choices Talese/Doubleday 1995.  The Beulah Quintet: O Beulah Land Viking and (London) Heinemann 1956, Know Nothing Viking and (London) Heinemann 1961, Prisons Putnam 1973 and as The Long Road to Paradise (London) Constable 1974, The Scapegoat Random House 1980, The Killing Ground Farrar Straus 1982.  All the Brave Promises Delacorte and (London) Heinemann 1966, The Story of Flight Random House 1967, The Scopes Trial: The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, Watts, 1972, Water World Dutton, 1984, Turkish Reflections: A Biography of a Place Prentice Hall and (London) Grafton 1991, Addie University of South Carolina Press 1998, I, Roger Williams  Plus uncollected short stories, essays, plays, film scripts.

Education and Career:  Sweetbriar College. Career (chronological): Model.  Actress.  Women's Auxiliary, R.A.F. 1942-43. Writer for Office of War Information in London.  Assistant editor  Harper's Bazaar,  English correspondent Flair, Associate Professor Bard College (NY) Visiting lecturer University of Virginia, Iowa Writer's Workshop.  Founder of PEN-Faulkner Award.

Awards: Guggenheim Fellow 1958 and 1960, Merrill Foundation Award 1975, National Book Award 1978 for Blood Tie, Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize 1983, Academy Award in Literature (American Academy of Arts and Letters) 1984.

Reviewers' Comments:  
-"Her fiction reveals exhaustive research blended well with her journalistic training and powers of observation.  In the Beulah Quintet, for example, she dramatized factual incidents, recreated historical communities based on the kinds of people who actually settled there, and wrote seamless, flowing narratives--.Settle succeeded in writing compelling historical fiction through well-researched prose, development of characters and dialogue, and eye for detail--.History is dramatized and made real, with actual events recreated and experienced by well-drawn characters--with the details and vivid writing that makes her prose so powerful." (Biography Resource Center)  
-"She writes so well that one sometimes feels lost between illusion and reality, or literature and life." (Literature Resource Center)  

Excerpts from In Their Own Country:

Mary Lee: Beware of anybody who thinks they're absolutely right. Because they're damn dangerous. I sometimes think the greatest gift of God is doubt and questioning.

Mary Lee: I have, as a result of all this work, literally fallen in love with democracy. But democracy is not me against you. Democracy is the balance between us. And there's another way of saying it. Voltaire: "I disagree with you, sir, but I defend to the death your right to say it."

I don't think we realize in this country how truly rare the history of our democracy is. It started in the frontier, but it started with ideas that were brought over here. And those ideas, over and over, we have tried to squash. We have fought against them. We have tried to form autocracies, as was formed in every state in the South before the Civil War.

We survived it. We survived the 20's when there were attempts to blot out opposition. We survived the early 50's, when the McCarthy hearing were attempts to blot out opposition.

Watch anybody who is calling something they don't agree with by the wrong name. Because you find all the way through American history that those who are autocrats tend to use the wrong name for those who disagree.

Mary Lee: Recorded history is wrong. It's wrong because the voiceless have no voice in it. It becomes official history. I thought in terms of writing good, honest history. And to give those ... you know, when they say 1 3/4 people arrived on such-and-such a day as indentured servants in Virginia in 1774. I gave them a name! And a world that they did come from. And a place that they did go. And what happened to them. I simply tried to put a human face on American history.

See also: Literature Resource Center, Biography Resource Center, The Iron Mountain Review. Mountainlit.com