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For seventeen years, New Stories from the South has given readers a
diverse sampling of the best stories about the south. Like the television show
Law and Order, the cast changes every season but the quality of the finished
product never suffers. The characters in these stories aren’t the stereotypical
characters with no teeth and living down dirt roads in trailers on the verge
of collapse. These are intelligently written stories about people with genuine
moral conflicts, and they’re told in voices that are more deeply rooted
in tradition than those in any other part of the country.
The 2002 edition contains stories about Confederate Soldiers attempting
to desert and a young girl hiding from Sherman’s Army in a bombed out house.
But not everything is about the War of Northern Aggression. There are also stories
like the one that tells of a father trying to win his son’s teacher’s
heart with phony treasures at show and tell. Other stories explore a myth of
Memphis music, the love a man has for his ex-wife, how a fall from an oil rig
changes one man forever, and the repercussions of writing about one’s own
family. The stories are not all directly set in the south but all have some
link to the region that makes the reader understand they could not be about
people from any other place.
Every year, this anthology is edited by Shannon Ravenel, a native of South
Carolina. Before she began this series in 1986 she had spent thirteen years
as the editor of The Best American Short Stories. Now she finds the stories
for this anthology by scouring exactly one hundred popular and literary magazines
to discover the stories that ring the truest about the culture of the south.
The series never disappoints.
This book is a great glimpse at some of the best short fiction writers working
today. I recommend that you add it to your list of books to buy and read.
