Leaving Cold Sassy by Olive Ann Burns

Leaving Cold Sassy by Olive Ann Burns

Anyone who came under the spell of Olive Ann Burns's classic novel Cold Sassy Tree will delight in Leaving Cold Sassy, which returns to the story of the unforgettable Will Tweedy. In 1917, twenty-five-year-old Will now faces the complexities of adult life. He grapples with the influences of the modern world on his cherished Georgia hometown, which has recently been renamed Progressive City, and he finds his wife-to-be in a feisty young schoolteacher named Sanna Klein.

Olive Ann Burns had completed fifteen chapters of this novel by the time of her death in 1990, and she expressed her wish for them to be published, as they are here, with her notes for future scenes. In addition, Olive Ann's longtime editor and friend, Katrina Kenison, leaves us with an appreciative reminiscence of the beloved author and the legacy she left behind.

Olive Ann Burns was born in 1924 on a farm in Banks County, Georgia, and attended Commerce High School, which served as the inspiration for Cold Sassy. She attended Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, earned a journalism degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and worked for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution's Sunday magazine staff for ten years. Throughout her cancer treatment, she turned to fiction writing for a break. Before her death in 1990, she finished Cold Sassy Tree and a partial manuscript for its sequel, Leaving Cold Sassy.