In the following chapter excerpt, Carr examines how the politics and artistry of play-production challenged McCullers, leaving her humiliated after the negative critical reception of The Square Root of Wonderful.

Carson McCullers was the author, too, of a littleknown, second play, The Square Root of Wonderful, which opened on Broadway nearly eight years after the premiere of The Member of the Wedding. The reception of this play, however (by audiences and critics alike), was anything but enthusiastic.

McCullers conceived the piece originally as a play and worked on it sporadically from 1952 until 1956, along with her novel, Clock Without Hands. This four-year period was scarred by McCullers's continued ill health, the suicide of her husband, and perhaps the most devastating single event in her life, the death of her mother. Sick of heart yet salved by the will to keep writing, McCullers retained the essential features of the...