A Girl Named Sooner

Sooner was a little girl. Named because she'd been born too soon after a contrived marriage, she spent the first nine years of her life as the virtual slave of a bootlegging, bible-quoting and embittered old woman. Her existence was in drudgery, in loneliness and in the dumb acceptance of things as they were. Her compensation was in the affinity she developed with the animal friends she found in the woods. This is a novel of relationships and reactions, of how Sooner's care for a hurt animal attracted the attention of a perceptive sheriff and a lonely veterinarian and his wife. It is a story of change and mutual growth, as the untutored girl goes to live first in the home and then in the hearts of this childless couple. It is the revelation of the complexities of a woman's love, whose barrenness seemed an unendurable wall until the act of giving freely made her free too. It is a book to be savored slowly, with laughter, tears, empathy and final satisfaction. A GIRL NAMED SOONER was made into a TV Movie - IBM/NBC Special, adapted by Suzanne Clauser, from her novel and starred Lee Remick, Richard Crenna and Cloris Leachman; endorsed by the NEA and nominated by Writers Guild of America as outstanding adaptation of the year.