The Optimist's Daughter

Laurel is the only child of Judge McKelva and his wife, Becky. She is named after the state flower of her mother’s home state, West Virginia, a place that figures prominently in Laurel’s life. Laurel is seen as a woman with integrity and inner strength. She doesn’t gossip with the town ladies about Fay, and she holds her tongue when Fay lashes out at her.

Laurel was widowed early into her marriage to Phillip Hand, a talented architect who died in the Navy during the war. When Laurel arrives in New Orleans to be with her father before his surgery, she faces many emotional challenges, mainly keeping her father’s true memory alive in the face of his antagonistic wife and the friends who inflate his narrative. When her father dies, Laurel’s vulnerable state leads her into a period of deep introspection and reflection.

As a direct result of her emotional struggles, Laurel attempts to reconcile the past with the new reality—Fay’s ownership of her childhood home, the death of both her parents, and the death of her husband. In this reckoning, Laurel, a sensitive and intelligent woman, evaluates her parents’ marriage and her own. Through a long, stormy night, Laurel, for the first time, makes peace with her life and the memories that both haunt and sustain her.