The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories by Carson McCullers

Miss Amelia and the hunchback, Cousin Lymon, unintentionally create a new tradition for the town, and the people gather inside the café on Sunday evenings, often until midnight. With everyone gathered inside, Miss Amelia brings out some liquor and crackers, which further shocks the men, as they have never witnessed Miss Amelia be hospitable enough to allow drinking inside her home. Finally, they enter the store all at once and are stunned to see that the hunchback is alive and well. When the rumors hit their peak, a group of eight men come to her store, sitting outside on the steps for the day and waiting to see if something will happen. When Miss Amelia, whom the townspeople see as a calculating woman who never acts without reason, takes the stranger into her home, rumors begin to circulate that Miss Amelia has done so in order to take what the hunchback has in his suitcase. The story introduces Miss Amelia Evans, strong in both body and mind, who is approached by a hunchbacked man with only a suitcase in hand who claims to be her kin. 'The Ballad of the Sad Cafe' opens in a small, isolated town in the Southern United States. The American playwright Edward Albee adapted the novella as a stage play in 1963, which itself was adapted into a 1991 film of the same name starring Vanessa Redgrave and Keith Carradine. The first edition of the book also included McCullers' previously published novels The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Reflections in a Golden Eye, and The Member of the Wedding. The Ballad of the Sad Café, first published in 1951, is a book by Carson McCullers comprising a novella of the same title along with six short stories: 'Wunderkind', 'The Jockey', 'Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland', 'The Sojourner', 'A Domestic Dilemma', and 'A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud'.

The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories by Carson McCullers