Which novel by Shirley Ann Grau won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1965?

Which novel by Shirley Ann Grau won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1965? The Keepers of the House.

Published in 1964, The Keepers of the House follows seven generations of the Howland family in rural Alabama. Its layered family history examines inherited power, racial hypocrisy, social reputation, and the silence surrounding interracial relationships in the American South.

Grau’s Pulitzer was awarded in 1965, a period when the civil-rights movement made the novel’s treatment of race especially provocative. The book’s reception was intensely controversial; Grau faced public attacks, including a cross-burning at her Louisiana home.

The title is often confused with other Southern or regional novels in Pulitzer trivia. House Made of Dawn won in 1969 for N. Scott Momaday, and The Optimist’s Daughter won in 1973 for Eudora Welty. The Painted Bird, meanwhile, was not a Pulitzer-winning novel.