Darkness, fire, and pain : finding strength through endurance in Mildred Haun's The hawk's done gone and other stories

The purpose of this study is to point out the literary importance of Mildred Eunice Haun, born in 1911 in Hamblen County, Tennessee. Haun provided an authentic depiction of Appalachian life, having lived in the hills of East Tennessee until she moved to the home of her aunt and uncle in Franklin in 1 927 for the purpose of attending high school and college. My research for the thesis included perusing Haun's personal papers located in the Vanderbilt Library Special Collections, interviewing personal acquaintances from the literary world, and searching for criticism of Haun' s texts. During her years at Vanderbilt, Haun gained the attention of John Crowe Ransom and Donald Davidson and wrote a series of short stories that were published in 1940 as The Hawk's Done Gone. In addition, her unpublished M.A. thesis on Cocke County ballads is one of the most significant and complete collections of its type, according to Davidson and others. This thesis examines the life of Mildred Haun in some detail, but it focuses on an analysis of relationships in the 1968 edition of her book The Hawk's Done Gone and Other Stories.