Carson McCullers

In a small Georgia mill town during the depression, four misfits form a group that revolves around a deaf-mute whose sole companion has been sent to an insane asylum.

"In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940), one of the most extraordinary debuts in modern American literature, an enigmatic deaf-mute draws out the confessions of an itinerant worker, a young girl, a doctor, and a widowed cafe proprietor. The disfiguring violence of desire is explored with shocking intensity in two shorter works, Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941), a tale of murder and madness at an army base, and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1943),...

At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music.