The Forge (Library of Alabama Classics) - Softcover

T.S. Stribling was born in 1881 in Clifton, Tennessee, the child of a family whose allegiance was divided in the Civil War. In 1902, he graduated from Florence Normal School, now the University of North Alabama. In 1903, he relocated to Tuscaloosa where he taught high school and attended the University of Alabama School of Law. He practiced law until 1907, when he devoted himself to writing full-time. His “Vaiden Trilogy” is considered his magnum opus, and the second book in the series, The Store, earned the Pulitzer Prize. By the time of his death, he had written more than twelve novels, one a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, two Literary Guild selections, and another the first book by an American selected by the English Book League.

“A half-century ago, Stribling won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. What Stribling did in his day was somewhat revolutionary; years before Faulkner, Stribling was publishing short stories set in the South that completely challenged the old molasses-and-roses plots of Southern literature.... The raw material Stribling used was close at hand and rubbed many raw nerves in the tense days of the 1920s and 1930s. But the message itself is just as relevant now as then.”
—Larry McGehee, author of Southern Seen: Meditations on Past and Present