Which novel by Eudora Welty won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1973?

Eudora Welty’s novel The Optimist’s Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1973.

The 1972 novel is a compact, deeply psychological story about Laurel McKelva, who returns to New Orleans when her father, Judge Clinton McKelva, undergoes eye surgery. After his death, Laurel remains in the family home and confronts memories of her parents, her own grief, and the tensions created by her father’s second marriage.

Welty’s fiction is known for its vivid sense of place, carefully observed Southern communities, and attention to the inner lives of ordinary people. In The Optimist’s Daughter, physical sight and memory are closely connected: the father’s failing vision becomes part of a larger meditation on what families see, conceal, and misunderstand.

The wrong options are all associated with Welty, but they belong to different parts of her career. A Curtain of Green is a short-story collection, The Ponder Heart is a novel published in 1954, and Delta Wedding is a 1946 novel. The Pulitzer recognized The Optimist’s Daughter specifically.