Rosacoke Mustian is a young woman in 1950s rural North Carolina. She has been in love with Wesley Beavers for the past eight years, since they were children, and has been waiting without much success for him to reciprocate. Wesley, seemingly intent on enjoying the pleasures of a single young man, is about to be discharged from the Navy. He plans to remain in Norfolk and sell motorcycles.

While waiting, Rosa’s life revolves around her family and their trials – death, childbirth, both simultaneously – and small town life. The question is how long she’ll wait for Wesley – until her hand is forced and she must decide. This is a novel of quiet strength, beautifully written. ( )

Rosacoke Mustian has been in love with Wesley Beavers since she spotted him in a pecan tree eight years ago. She has endured his stint in the U. S. Navy; and as Reynolds Price's 1961 debut novel A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE begins, Rosacoke is still in the dark as to Wesley's feelings about her as he prepares to take a job in Norfolk, Virginia selling motorcycles. Most of the rest of this near perfect short novel-- 195 pages--is about this young woman's search for love with a person who probably doesn't deserve her. Of course there is a whole passel of supporting characters in Price's story set in rural North Carolina in 1956.

Mr. Price gets all the details just right: from cherry Jello to Kool-Ade to the local church's Amen corner to horehound candy to a punch board (something I had not thought about in more years than I care to remember). Men get their hair cut at home by family members; and the church, of course, is central to these characters' lives regardless of how they live when they are not within its doors: whether it is an emotional African American funeral for the young Mildred and friend of Rosacoke, who died in childbirth (the opening scene of the novel) or the closing Christmas pageant in the white Delight Church where Rosacoke plays the Virgin Mary and Wesley is a less-than-enthusiastic Wise Man. One reader writes, " And how many times have I heard a well-meaning person say on the death of someone, "He is far better off," what the ancient Mr. Isaac tells Rosacoke's mother when her husband was killed. "

While this novel takes place in the time just after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision and before Martin Luther King led the nonviolent movement for the rights of black people, when North Carolina and much of the rest of the American South would see all kinds of racial turmoil and violence, black people and white people, at least in Price's world, live together with a modicum of understanding.

The novel's beautiful title-- Price is a master at choosing them-- comes from a line from the movie "The Bridge on the River Kwai" when William Holden says, "Let me wish you a long and happy life." The final act for Rosacoke is to fall in love with the baby of Mildred--the baby that she holds in her arms during the Christmas pageant, as she whispers to the baby the answer she will give Wesley after the pageant--yes she will marry him.

From Terry Gross