• Reading Group Guide

Dateline: Paducah, Kentucky July 24, 1966
---Sixteen college seniors begin a journey down the Mississippi
River: homage to "Huckleberry Finn" and a farewell to their
girlhood. They built their own raft, kept journals and had the time
of their young lives. Among the raft riders was Lee Smith, who is
now an award-winning novelist.

Smith says, "Since it's always easier for me to tell the truth in
fiction, THE LAST GIRLS is a novel. Huck was an American Odysseus
off on an archetypal journey … the oldest plot of all.
According to the archetype, the traveler learns something about
himself (not herself [historically]) along the way" --- and from
this premise emerges the story of Smith's new heroines.

Dateline: Memphis, Tennessee May 7, 1999
---The five women who comprise the cast of LAST GIRLS gather at the
Peabody Hotel in preparation for another trip on the Mississippi
River. But this time, it will be in a luxurious riverboat and with
a different mission. One of the original rafters has died and the
small group has decided to scatter her ashes upon the water.

Now in their fifties, the women understand, that this river ride
will be another "coming of age" experience for each of them.
Harriet Holding, spinster and teacher, narrates the story. With her
on this tragic-comic trip is Anna Todd, a romance writer with a
worldwide reputation; Catherine Wilson, a sculptress, married to
her third husband; Courtney Gray, socialite; and of course there is
"Baby", their now dead comrade whose ashes they will scatter upon
the mighty Mississippi.

Lee Smith is a "Southern storyteller" in the tradition of William
Faulkner and Mark Twain. Her gifts are capturing nuance to enhance
her characters and writing lyrical prose, while at the same time,
allowing the reader "in" for a close glimpse of their lives. They
are serious and eccentric, they are sassy and romantic, they are
'southern belles' and they are women who have charted their own
lives and are still learning to live with their decisions.

Of the LAST GIRLS Smith sums up her mission this way, "I'm trying
to examine the idea of romance, the relevance of past to present,
the themes of memory an desire." Both fans and newcomers to Smith's
work will be delighted with her accomplishments.