This Goodly Land

Babs H. Deal (June 23, 1929–February 20, 2004)

Other Names Used

• Babs Hodges: birth name

Alabama Connections

• Scottsboro, Jackson County: birthplace, childhood residence, brief adult residence
• Birmingham, Jefferson County: employment
• Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County: education
• Gulf Shores, Baldwin County: adult residence
• Montgomery, Montgomery County: place of death

Selected Works

• Deal, Babs H. Acres of Afternoon. New York: D. McKay Co., 1959.
• Deal, Babs H. It's Always Three O'Clock. New York: D. McKay Co., 1961. Rpt. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990.
• Deal, Babs H. The Grail. New York: D. McKay Co., 1964.
• Deal, Babs H. Fancy's Knell. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966.
• Deal, Babs H. The Walls Came Tumbling Down. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968. Rpt. as Friendships, Secrets and Lies. New York: Falcon Crest, 1979.
• Deal, Babs H. High Lonesome World: The Death and Life of a Country Music Singer. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969.
• Deal, Babs H. The Crystal Mouse. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973.

Literary Awards

• Alabama Author Award, Alabama Library Association, 1969, for The Walls Came Tumbling Down

Biographical Information

Babs Deal was born and raised in Scottsboro, Ala. She worked as a substitute teacher in Scottsboro, then joined the US Army and worked as a clerk-typist in Washington, D.C. After her discharge, she worked briefly as a typist in Birmingham and attended the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where she earned her BA in 1952. While at the University, she was a student of Hudson Strode. She also met and married writer Borden Deal. The Deals moved to Scottsboro in 1954 but returned to Tuscaloosa in the late 1950s. Writer Wayne Greenhaw, then a student at the University, watched their children while the adult Deals wrote.

Deal published her first novel, Acres of Afternoon, in 1959. In 1961, her short story “Make My Death Bed” was televised as part of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series. The Deals moved to Sarasota, Fla., in 1964 and became involved with the writing community there. Babs Deal published twelve novels between 1959 and 1979. Her short stories were published in national magazines such as McCall’s and Redbook. In 1979, Friendships, Secrets, and Lies, a movie version of her novel The Walls Came Tumbling Down, was broadcast on NBC-TV. The Deals divorced in 1975, and Babs spent her later years living in Gulf Shores, Ala. After becoming seriously ill in the winter of 2004, she was hospitalized in Montgomery, where she died.

Interests and Themes

Most of Babs Deal’s novels are set in small Southern towns similar to the ones in which she lived. Acres of Afternoon and It’s Always Three O’Clock are set in a fictional version of her hometown, Scottsboro, while The Grail is about the football team of a Southern university modeled on the University of Alabama.

For More Information

Please check your local library for these materials. If items are not available locally, your librarian can help you borrow them through the InterLibrary Loan program. Your librarian can also help you find other information about this author.

There may be more information available through the databases in the Alabama Virtual Library. If you are an Alabama citizen, AVL can be used at your public library or school library media center. You can also get a username and password from your librarian to use AVL at home.

Reference Articles

• Greenhaw, Wayne. "In Memorium [sic]: Babs Deal". First Draft Spr. 2004: 17.

Location of Papers

• Boston University

Last updated on May 30, 2008.