Elizabeth Spencer (1921–2019) was the author of nine novels and novellas and three other short-story collections. She was raised in Mississippi, where tales of the Civil War lingered and segregation seemed permanent, during the Great Depression. Spencer’s wanderings took her to Italy in 1953, to Montreal in 1958, and back to the South in 1986.
“A national treasure . . . [Elizabeth
Spencer] is indispensable witness to the difficulties of
having a home and then leaving it, to the struggles of smart,
sexually alive young women trying to find their way in the
world.”—The Paris Review
“There seems to be nothing this extraordinary writer can’t do.”—The
New York Times
“One of the foremost chroniclers of the American South.”—The
Washington Post
“A retrospective collection of twenty-seven stories, written over a
period of more than half a century, by a Southern writer whose best
fiction merits comparison with the work of Katherine Anne Porter
and Eudora Welty.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Spencer is a spellbinding storyteller. Her stories . . . are dense
and rich as novels, as light as air; they hover in the mind like
hummingbirds.”—Lee Smith
“What [Spencer’s] stories do wonderfully, for me, is explore the
ties that bind–in families, friendships, communities, marriages–how
mysterious, twisted, chafing, inescapable, and life-supporting such
ties are.”—Alice Munro
“A writer one puts on the ‘permanent’ shelf. These stories will be
read and reread.”—James Dickey
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