Frances Parkinson Keyes -- FAVORITE AUTHOR, BOOK LIST

FAVORITE AUTHOR, BOOK LIST

Frances Parkinson Keyes

I have a stack of unread (by me) Frances Parkinson Keyes books, which reminded me of how much I used to enjoy her books. Now, looking at this stack makes me want to dive in and read more of them! (Ignore the Mildred Jordan book that snuck into this stack.)

Frances Parkinson Keyes was a prolific American author with an interesting life. She was married to a US Senator between World War I and II and wrote memoirs about her life as a Senator’s wife, as well as several other books. After he died in 1938, she wrote over 40 more books before her death in 1970. Although she grew up in New England, she spent the last 20 years of her life living in New Orleans and many of her novels are set in Louisiana and the Deep South. Several explore Creole history and culture.

Keyes (pronounced like “eyes” instead of “keys” although I’ve never heard anyone say it that way), wrote short stories, novels, memoirs, history books, travelogue, children’s books, inspirational fiction, poetry, and even a cookbook. Her novels are mostly family sagas, romance novels, historical fiction, and the like. Most, like Dinner at Antoine’s, are excellent entertainment. A few, like Blue Camelia about the history of rice farming in Louisiana, would bore your socks off. It was hitting the Blue Camelia wall that put a stop to my FPK jag a while back. But seeing this stack on my TBR shelf makes me want to take it up again.

She's fallen off the radar, although she was enormously poplar during her lifetime. Fans of mid-century female authors would love Keyes. I always think that, if Dean Street Press included American authors in its Furrowed Middlebrow series, Keyes would be a perfect fit.

Here is a list of FPK's novels. I will never find and read all of her many books, but I plan to at least try to read her novels. Some may be too hard to find, although I'm sure they will turn up at library sales if I keep looking. 

• The Old Gray Homestead (aka Sylvia Carey) (1919)

• The Career of David Noble (1924)

• Queen Anne's Lace (1930)

• Lady Blanche Farm: A Romance of the Commonplace (1931)

• Senator Marlowe's Daughter (1933) 

• The Safe Bridge (1934)

• Honor Bright (1936)

• Parts Unknown (1938)

• The Great Tradition (1939)

• Fielding's Folly (1940)

• All That Glitters (1941)

• Crescent Carnival (1942)

• Also the Hills (1943)

• The River Road (1945)

• Came a Cavalier (1947)

• Dinner at Antoine's (1948) FINISHED

• Joy Street (1950) TBR SHELF

• Steamboat Gothic (1952) TBR SHELF

• The Ambassadress (1953)

• The Royal Box (1954) TBR SHELF

• Blue Camellia (1957) FINISHED

• The Golden Slippers (aka Victorine) (1958) TBR SHELF

• Station Wagon In Spain (aka The Letter from Spain) (1959) FINISHED

• The Explorer (1964) FINISHED

• The Chess Players: A Novel of New Orleans and Paris (1960)

• The Heritage (1960) TBR SHELF

• Shelter (1961)

• Madame Castel's Lodger (1962) TBR SHELF

• I, the King (1966) TBR SHELF