Author William Gay is the winner of the 1999 William Peden Award and the 1999 James A. Michener Memorial Prize. In his debut collection, Gay brings to life 13 stories about a diverse group of colorful characters living in the fertile Tennessee country land.

This collection assembles Carson McCullers' best stories, including her study of love and longing "The Ballad of the Sad Café." A haunting tale of a human triangle that culminates in an astonishing brawl, the novella introduces readers to Miss Amelia, a formidable southern woman whose café serves as the town's gathering place. Among other works, the collection also includes "Wunderkind," McCullers' first published story, written when she was only...

"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,...