Tag Archives: My Home Is Far Away

Who was Dawn Powell?

powellbeach

1896 Born in family home at 53 West North Street in Mt. Gilead, Ohio, on November 28, the second of three daughters of Roy King Powell and Hattie Sherman Powell. (In later years Powell habitually gives her birth year as 1897. Father, b. August 24, 1869, and mother, b. March 24, 1872, are both from […]

1941 Diary

Cover 1941 Diary

Powell begins to sketch her autobiographical novel “My Home Is Far Away” in an undated section of this diary. Many anecdotes about Powell’s friend Coby Gilman, some as of yet unpublished.

1944 Diary

Cover 1944 Diary

Publication of “My Home Is Far Away.” Powell was deeply hurt by Edmund Wilson’s mixed review in The New Yorker. Powell is finishing “My Home Is Far Away”; “Perkins” is Max Perkins, who also edited Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe.

1945 Diary

Cover 1945 Diary

World War II ends and Powell says absolutely nothing about it. She is more interested in the sequel to “My Home Is Far Away,” which she will never complete. In September, her beloved cat, Perkins (named for Max), dies, inspiring one of the most passages in her diaries. Powell’s complete and unedited eulogy for her […]

1949 Diary

Cover 1949 Diary

Powell had a tumor removed from her chest, which had been blocking her breath increasingly. Summer at MacDowell Colony. Death of sister Mabel in October effectively brings to an end her interest in a sequel to “My Home Is Far Away.”