Dimestore: A Writer’s Life by Lee Smith

Lee Smith comes across as a dynamic cheerleader who talks with a loud lilting voice and dominates the room with her infectious and buoyant demeanor. She makes those she talks with feel like they are the most important people ever. They feel in the presence of a personage who wants to know everything about them and yet can’t resist an irrepressible urge to share her reactions as well. Her writing reflects her inner spirit, full of humor, always telling a compelling story whose wisdom and depth sneaks up on the reader. Lee Smith was born in 1944 in Grundy, Virginia, a coalfield county seat where her father owned the Ben Franklin Dime Store and the Piggly Wiggly Grocery Store. Her father’s people had deep roots there in Buckhannon County.  Her mother came from Assateague Island on the other side of Virginia to teach school there. In her junior year, Lee Smith was sent to a boarding high school in Richmond, Virginia, where one of her uncles was serving in the state legislature. Then she at