A Summons to Memphis follows narrator Phillip Carver’s return to the South from his life in Manhattan. Phillip’s two sisters have demanded his presence; the three adult children intend to prevent their father’s remarriage. Taylor’s narrow focus, on a particular elite family—white, rooted in the land but residing in the city, transplants from Nashville to Memphis—illuminates the contrasts and class stratifications in Tennessee from the 1930s to the 1970s. A Summons to Memphis won both the 1986 National Book Critics Award and the 1986 Pulitzer Prize.

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