An essential collection of classic stories that established Flannery O'Connor's reputation as an American master of fiction—now with a new introduction by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Groff In 1955, with the title story and others in this critical edition, Flannery O'Connor firmly laid claim to her place as one of the most original and provocative writers of her generation. Steeped in a Southern Gothic tradition...

"Collection of short stories by Eudora Welty, published in 1949. The stories had all been published previously, and Welty added one novella-length story, "Main Families in Morgana." Symbolism from Greek mythology unifies the stories, all of which are set in the Mississippi Delta town of Morgana over a 40-year period. The hero of "Moon Lake" and the guitarist in "Music from Spain" are Perseus figures. King MacLain, the protagonist of "Shower of Gold,"...

"An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South--and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America"-- "We all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits...

Some years ago my wife was in poor health, and our family doctor, in whose skill and honesty I had implicit confidence, advised a change of climate. I shared, from an unprofessional standpoint, his opinion that the raw winds, the chill rains, and the violent changes of temperature that characterized the winters in the region of the Great Lakes tended to aggravate my wife's difficulty, and would undoubtedly shorten her life if she remained exposed...

"Novel set in the south during the Great Depression that takes an entirely fresh view on big American themes-- race, heredity, inequality, shame-- set in a time of financial crisis and racialized violence"-- Cotton County, Georgia, 1930. Two babies-- one light-skinned, the other dark-- are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight,...

Earl Tubb is an angry old man with a very big stick. Euless Boss is a high school football coach with no more room in his office for trophies and no more room underneath the bleachers for burying bodies. And they're just two of the folks you'll meet in Castor County, Alabama, home of Boss BBQ, the state champion Runnin' Rebs and more bastards than you've ever seen!

Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like...

Not only do Southerners talk slowly, but sometimes they're hard to understand. No one realizes that more than Memphis belle Leelee Satterfield. Watching her tackle life and love in Vermont was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to antics, mischief, and romance. Back in Memphis and starting a new relationship with the Peter, the Yankee chef from her New England inn, you'd think she'd sit back and enjoy her newly crafted life back home in Dixie....

"Shares the memories of black domestic workers and the white families they served, uncovering the often intimate relationships between maid and mistress. Based on interviews with over fifty people--both white and black--these stories deliver a personal and powerful message about resilience and resistance in the face of oppression in the Jim Crow South"--Page [2] of jacket. The Maid Narratives shares the memories of black domestic workers and the...