This collection of the best short fiction by the author of the Pulitzer-prize novel All the King's Men, contains two novellas and twelve stories that encompass a variety of themes. The title piece chronicles the history of a Southern town and the life of one of its eccentric citizens. "The Unvexed Isles" and "The Life and Work of Professor Roy Millen" portray ironic situations in academic life. A number of other stories have rural settings: "Prime Leaf," a story of violence among tobacco farmers; "Her Own People," which sketches the plight of an itinerant Negro girl; and "Blackberry Winter," a reminiscence of a boyhood encounter with evil that Paul Engles calls "one of the supreme stories of American literature."

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