September 27, 2020: Larry Watson - The Lives of Edie Pritchard

Larry Watson grew up in Bismarck, North Dakota. He holds BA and MA degrees from the University of North Dakota and a PhD from the University of Utah. Watson is the author of eleven novels, among them Montana 1948, Let Him Go, and, most recently, The Lives of Edie Pritchard. Late Assignments, his collection of poems, was published in 2019. He taught in colleges and universities for over 40 years before retiring from Marquette University.

The Lives of Edie Pritchard​

​From acclaimed novelist Larry Watson, a multigenerational story of the West told through the history of one woman trying to navigate life on her own terms.

Edie—smart, self‑assured, beautiful—always worked hard. She worked as a teller at a bank, she worked to save her first marriage, and later, she worked to raise her daughter even as her second marriage came apart. Really, Edie just wanted a good life, but everywhere she turned, her looks defined her. Two brothers fought over her. Her second husband became unreasonably possessive and jealous. Her daughter resented her. And now, as a grandmother, Edie finds herself harassed by a younger man. It’s been a lifetime of proving that she is allowed to exist in her own sphere. The Lives of Edie Pritchard tells the story of one woman just trying to be herself, even as multiple men attempt to categorize and own her.

Triumphant, engaging, and perceptive, Watson’s novel examines a woman both aware of her physical power and constrained by it, and how perceptions of someone in a small town can shape her life through the decades.