Desert Rose

Bagley (1925–2011) first began writing a biography of her younger sister Coretta Scott King in 1966, but the manuscript was put aside following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. She returned to the project in 2004, offering readers what she promised would be an intimate portrait; however, it is more often frustratingly unrevealing. Hilley (Sarah Palin: A New Kind of Leader) undertook final polishing of the manuscript. Bagley covers Coretta's full life from rural Alabama through college and postgraduate musical training to her years with her husband and beyond. She traces the Kings' life together through both the Civil Rights Movement and Coretta's life as a mother and concert soprano. Bagley suggests that Coretta's early involvement in the international peace movement, e.g., with Women's Strike for Peace, may have influenced her husband. She then sketches out her widowed sister's continued commitment to peace and social justice and her efforts to preserve the legacy of her husband until her death in 2006.