The Last Girls centers around four middle-aged Southern women who, as students at an idyllic Blue Ridge women's college thirty years before, were inspired by Huckleberry Finn to take their own raft trip down the Mississippi River. Now a tragedy brings them back together for a repeat voyage under very different circumstances--aboard a luxurious cruise steamboat. Through this framework, which can be seen as a modern-day rendition of Mary McCarthy's The Group, Smith explores the nature of romance, the relationship between life and fiction, the relevance of the past to the present, and the unexpected course of women's lives.

Lee Smith grew up in Grundy, Virginia, in the Appalachian Mountains. She is the author of nine novels. Smith served as Professor of English at North Carolina State University from 1981-1999 and has received many prizes for her fiction including two O. Henry Awards, the Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award, and the Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Smith is the mother of two grown sons and is married to the writer, Hal Crowther. She lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina.