Carson McCullers: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Lula Carson Smith was born on February 19, 1917. She was the oldest of three children. Carson found herself to be very good at playing the piano at a young age. She shocked her mother at age six by sitting down and playing with both hands a song she heard for the first time that afternoon in a movie theater. From then until late high school, she practiced fervently and hoped to carry her work onto a musical education at the New York Julliard School. However, at seventeen, she was told that she had pneumonia and would have many complications. Later, she found out she had rheumatic fever. She was too we