When Mary Ladd Gavell died in 1967, at the age of forty-seven, she had never been published. But her story "The Rotifer" was fortuitously discovered by John Updike, who called it a "gem" and included it in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. With the publication of I Cannot Tell a Lie, Exactly, Mary Ladd Gavell takes her rightful place among the best writers of her--and our--time.About the Author: Mary Ladd Gavell was born in Cuero, Texas, in 1919 and graduated from Texas A&M University in 1940. She married Stefan Gavell in 1953, and the couple had two sons. They lived in Washington, D.C., where Mary Gavell worked at Psychiatry magazine. She died in 1967.