A collection of stories about several families who, although now living in different cities, all started out in Thornton, Tennessee, and whose women share a sense of hanging onto the customs and social roles of their southern origins while the men move onto new lives.

Recipient of a senior fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1984, Taylor here collects 14 of his short stories. Set in his native South between the two world wars, these tales of domestic life explore the extraordinarry world of manners, expectations and unspoken understandings. They reveal not only Taylor's emotional depth and power of observation but also his understanding of the social and economic peculiarities of the American...