Raney was published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 1985, one of the first novels from the independent press that would become synonymous with literary Southern fiction. Raney Bell is a young woman from Listre, North Carolina — a place so small that its social life revolves entirely around the Free Will Baptist Church, the family dinner table, and the Piggly Wiggly. She marries Charles Shepherd, an Atlanta librarian who reads the New York Times, listens to jazz, and has Black friends — each of which, in Raney’s world, is approximately as exotic as the others.
The novel is structured as a series of domestic crises — where to attend church, what to name the baby, whether to invite a Black colleague to dinner, how to handle Raney’s meddling mother — that expose the cultural gulf between two people who love each other but come from different Americas. Edgerton’s genius is to tell the story entirely through Raney’s voice, which is never mocked: she is intelligent, perceptive, and genuinely trying to understand her husband’s world, even as her assumptions about race, religion, and social propriety make that understanding almost impossible.
The book was controversial in North Carolina — Edgerton was teaching at a Baptist college, and the administration forced him to resign after the novel was published, objecting to its frank (and affectionate) portrayal of Baptist culture. The controversy only confirmed the book’s accuracy.
Collecting Raney
First edition (Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, 1985): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $40–$100
- Very good/very good: $15–$40
- Signed: $60–$150