These stories of small-town life in the American South evoke a sense of pleasant, polite community, with some blessed by strong family ties. But beneath the surface, these tales-some comic, some dark, and some both-reveal the secrets and resentments that fester in the past and haunt the present.

In the tradition of Southern writers like Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, and Eudora Welty, Katherine Elberfeld has created eccentric characters ranging from slightly odd to downright sinister. Her stories are about choices and change, with characters confronting what life has dealt them, making mistakes-sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse.