Backstory

A Literary Life on the Run

Dean Faulkner Wells, Lawrence Wells

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496863263
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

For every published article there is a backstory of behind-the-scenes adventures. Between 1980 and 2000, Dean Faulkner Wells and Lawrence Wells traveled coast to coast on magazine assignments. Backstory: A Literary Life on the Run reveals how unexpected events played a major role in each article. The collection of twenty-five articles begins with Dean's interview with Willie "Suicide" Jones, her late father's wing walker and fellow barnstormer, and ends with Dean's fond recollection of a childhood Christmas at Rowan Oak, home of her uncle William Faulkner.

In between, the couple travels to Wounded Knee, scene of the tragic massacre of Big Foot and his band of Sioux, where Dean tears out a lock of hair and ties it to a fence in spiritual kinship. In Little Rock, the couple spends an evening with authors Charles Portis and Dee Brown. In San Francisco, they interview California jazz artists "Wild Mango" and singer/guitarist Joyce Cooling. They drive the Santa Fe Trail and tour Palo Duro Canyon near Amarillo, Texas.

There are personal moments such as attending author Budd Schulberg's wedding reception in Montauk, New York, and dining at the home of Jackson Pollock's widow, Lee Krasner. At a Memorial Day party on Long Island, film star Lauren Bacall tells Dean, "Hey, you sound more like me than me!" In Daphne, Alabama, Dean visits her longtime friend Peets Buffett, mother of Jimmy Buffett. In a Louisiana swamp, Larry has trouble finding an alligator to photograph until Dean points to a gator dozing at his feet. In Las Vegas, Dean's addiction to slot machines leads to a domestic squabble. Ultimately, Backstory reveals a marriage of mind and spirit.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Epigraph
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Backstory: “The Man Who Walked in the Sky”
• Chapter 2 Backstory: “A Little Piece of America”
• Chapter 3 Backstory: “Little Bighorn Days”
• Chapter 4 Backstory: “Shakespeare Slept Here”
• Chapter 5 Backstory: “Tom Sawyer’s Hannibal”
• Chapter 6 Backstory: “Women and Jazz in California”
• Chapter 7 Backstory: “Hitchcock’s Bodega Bay”
• Chapter 8 Backstory: “Following the Santa Fe Trail”
• Chapter 9 Backstory: “Spirits of Palo Duro Canyon”
• Chapter 10 Backstory: “Draw, Pardner”
• Chapter 11 Backstory: “History on Ice”
• Chapter 12 Backstory: “Fast Break”
• Chapter 13 Backstory: “To Be a Scrub”
• Chapter 14 Backstory: “Looking for Lady Luck”
• Chapter 15 Backstory: “Yoknapatawpha High”
• Chapter 16 Backstory: “Down in a Hole”
• Chapter 17 Backstory: “Concord’s Authors’ Ridge”
• Chapter 18 Backstory: “Patriots Day”
• Chapter 19 Backstory: “Poe’s Mysterious Visitor”
• Chapter 20 Backstory: “Architect of Monument Valley”
• Chapter 21 Backstory: “Arizona’s Triassic Park”
• Chapter 22 Backstory: “Saving Louisiana’s Wetlands”
• Chapter 23 Backstory: “When the Fish Come Up for Air”
• Chapter 24 Backstory: “The Days of Wine and Letters”
• Chapter 25 Backstory: “A Christmas Remembered”
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors