num_pages: 55
description: The place is the Deep South, the time 1948, just prior to the civil rights movement. Having recently demolished another car, Daisy Wertham, a rich, sharp-tongued Jewish widow of seventy-two, is informed by her son, Boolie, that henceforth she must rely on the services of a chauffeur. The person he hires for the job is a thoughtful, unemployed black man, Hoke, whom Miss Daisy immediately regards with disdain and who, in turn, is not impressed with his employer's patronizing tone and, he believes, her latent prejudice. But, in a series of absorbing scenes spanning twenty-five years, the two, despite their mutual differences, grow ever closer to, and more dependent on, each other, until, eventually, they become almost a couple. Slowly and steadily the dignified, good-natured Hoke breaks down the stern defenses of the ornery old lady, as she teaches him to read and write and, in a gesture of good will and shared concern, invites him to join her at a banquet in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. As the play ends Hoke has a final visit with Miss Daisy, now ninety-seven and confined to a nursing home, and while it is evident that a vestige of her fierce independence and sense of position still remain, it is also movingly clear that they have both come to realize they have more in common than they ever believed possible-and that times and circumstances would ever allow them to publicly admit.
language: English
title: Driving Miss Daisy
titlecomplete: Driving Miss Daisy
characters: Hoke Coleburn, Boolie Werthan, Daisy Werthan
genres: Historical, Audiobook, 20th Century, Media Tie In, Classics, Drama, Plays, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Theatre
ratings_count: 19879
places: Atlanta, Georgia, Georgia
series: Atlanta Trilogy
awards: awardedAt: 568022400000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Drama, awardedAt: 568022400000
name: Outer Critics Circle Award
publisher: Cornelsen