Claude J. Summers

Claude Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth met in 1963 at Louisiana State University, where Ted was a graduate student and Claude an undergraduate. There they forged a romantic and professional relationship that lasted until Ted's death in 2021. They collaborated on many scholarly books and articles. In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of their relationship, they were married in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Yet She Must Die

A Wat Thorne Mystery
by Ted-Larry Pebworth

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This book was submitted to DLD Books by Claude J. Summers.

June 1977, New Orleans. Wat Thorne, a Tulane University graduate teaching assistant, investigates the murder of a civil rights lawyer who hails from his hometown in North Louisiana. Against the backdrop of Anita Bryant's crusade against gay rights, Thorne, assisted principally by his friend Wilhelmina (Willie) and a young policeman, Nick, not only solves the crime, but also illuminates the precarious state of gay people even in a city as apparently accepting as New Orleans.

Offering insight into the city's gay life, as well as the academic milieu of the time, the novel is also a character study. In Wat Thorne, Ted-Larry Pebworth creates a memorable character whose penchant for literary allusions and witty repartee masks his deep mourning for the murder victim and his yearning for a committed relationship. Yet She Must Die is at once a murder mystery, a historical novel, and a romance.

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Reader Review

Yet She Must Die takes readers on a journey to the Louisiana of 1977 with an insightful and detailed picture of the social and political cultures of the day. Against this backdrop Ted-Larry Pebworth sets his well-plotted and skillfully written mystery. He introduces us to an engaging group of characters as they pursue the truth in a case that might otherwise have gone unsolved. Yet She Must Die is an intriguing and affecting novel.
—Linda Rapp

About the Author

Ted-Larry Pebworth was a distinguished scholar of Renaissance and Seventeenth–Century English literature. He was the author, co–author, editor, or co–editor of numerous books, articles, and texts that deeply influenced the shape of seventeeth–century studies. He was one of the co–convenors of the University of Michigan–Dearborn Renaissance Conferences and one of the original textual editors of the 10–volume Variorum Edition of the Poems of John Donne.

A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, he was educated at Centenary College, Tulane University, and Louisiana State University. He held professorships at the University of Illinois, Chicago; San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University, Northridge); and the University of Michigan–Dearborn, from which he retired as the William E. Stirton Professor Emeritus in the Humanities.

When he died on March 1, 2021, he left behind the manuscript of Yet She Must Die, which he had written some years previously. He wrote the novel primarily for his own amusement and that of some close friends. But it deserves publication not only because it is an enjoyable read but also because it preserves Ted's voice, especially in the character of Wat Thorne, his alter ego. The novel is in many ways autobiographical and expresses the author’s disgust with the racial and sexual bigotry he knew firsthand growing up in Louisiana. The character of Willie is based loosely on his dear friend Willene Schaefer Hardy, to whom the book is dedicated.

Ted-Larry Pebworth
1936-2021

Contact Information for Claude J. Summers

Email: csummers@umich.edu