Anne Rivers Siddons, "part of an important generation of post-civil-rights-era Southern writers and author of many bestselling novels," died September 11, the Charleston Post and Courier reported. She was 83. Siddons made an auspicious debut on the literary scene with her 1976 novel Heartbreak Hotel, which was "loosely based on her own experience as a student at Auburn University from 1954 to 1958, where she published an editorial in the school newspaper in support of integration that gained national traction and angered school administrators. When she did it a second time, she was dismissed from her position at the paper."
Her 19 novels and an essay collection (John Chancellor Makes Me Cry) established Siddons's "reputation as an influential writer whose gentility was belied by critical observations of the South," the Post and Courier noted, adding that she was part of a generation of writers who helped define what become known as the "New South,” a region steeped in tradition and history but capable of progressive transformation. Her other novels include Hill Towns, Peachtree Road, Up Island, Islands, The House Next Door, Colony, The Girls of August, Outer Banks, Low Country and Off Season.
"She played a very important role," said friend and fellow author Cynthia Graubart, whose future husband Cliff Graubart, owner of Atlanta's Old New York Book Shop, introduced her to Siddons in 1987. "I think that Anne is the picture of what a Southern woman had to overcome in her life to break from the barriers of old expectations. Even when she landed on the New York Times bestseller list, her mother at the end of a phone conversation still said, 'Have you ever done anything about your teaching certificate?' " Graubart added that Siddons "fought that in a certain sense. She was brought up to be a proper Southern lady, which she carried out beautifully, but she also fought against that stereotype. She wanted to be different, she wanted to break free."
Cassandra King, who, with her late husband Pat Conroy, also forged a close friendship with Siddons, said, "I read her earlier books. They really opened up my eyes to another way of looking at the South.... The thing that I loved about Anne was that she never talked about her own work.... She was very supportive of other writers. She wanted to know what I was working on, what Pat was working on."
In a tribute, author Patti Callahan Henry wrote: "There are books you discover at the moment in your life when you need them the most, for nourishment or encouragement, or when it's time to weep or heal. For me, Anne Rivers Siddons books are those exactly. Her novels shaped and influenced my imagination, cracked me open to understand the power of story."