"Set in Alabama and Virginia, these stories are quiet eviscerations of the white American south that touch on the desegregation of a junior high in 1963, the insecurity and mostly repressed violence of a divorced working man, the generation gap in a Vietnam-era family, the loss of her dreams about a creative life by a mother of two teenagers, the search for the truth and identity behind an old family tale, and a sons strained loyalty to both his estranged mother and father - all of which reflect the countrys growing and surly cultural restlessness"--.