Shirley Ann Grau

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Shirley Ann Grau, a Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer whose stories and novels told of both the dark secrets and the beauty of the Deep South, has died. She was 91.

Grau died Monday in a New Orleans-area memory care facility of complications from a stroke, her daughter Nora McAlister of Metairie said Wednesday.

Grau won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for her fourth book, “The Keepers of the House.”

“I came home from kindergarten to a house full of reporters and I didn’t know what was going on,” McAlister recalled.

The book drew critical praise but also threatening phone calls for its depiction of a long romance between a wealthy white man and his black housekeeper in rural Alabama.

Her six novels and four short story collections were all set in the Deep South, from New Orleans to north Louisiana and Alabama.

Richard Lapointe

EAST HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Richard Lapointe, whose conviction in the brutal killing of his wife’s grandmother was overturned after he spent nearly 26 years in prison, has died. He was 74.

Lapointe died at an East Hartford nursing home Tuesday after having battled the coronavirus, said one of his lawyers, W. James Cousins. It was not clear, however, if COVID-19 contributed to his death, Cousins said.

Lapointe, whose lawyers said he had Dandy-Walker syndrome, a congenital brain malformation, was freed from prison in 2015 after the state Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling, overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial in the 1987 stabbing, rape and strangulation of 88-year-old Bernice Martin in Manchester.

“It’s really quite sad that he spent 25 years incarcerated for something he didn’t do, only to spend his last remaining days advancing into dementia and then dying five years after his release,” Cousins said. “The COVID-19 accelerated it dramatically.”