Pariah and Other Stories — Joan Williams

Ten poignant and perceptive stories from one of the most distinctive voices in Southern literature

In these deeply affecting tales, Joan Williams captures with heart-wrenching clarity the pain and confusion of characters struggling to come to terms with a changing world. The Morning and the Evening, which would later be expanded into Williams's award-winning novel of the same name, is an exquisite and unsettling portrait of a mute man's isolation. In Spring Is Now, a Mississippi town grapples with its prejudices as integration becomes a reality. No Love for the Lonely is the touching and gently humorous story of a bachelor liberated and bewildered by the death of his overbearing sister. In the vivid and unsettling title story, a troubled housewife faces her demons and mourns the life she never had. Graceful, elegiac, and authentic, the stories of Joan Williams are marked by their compassion and clear-eyed insight. With remarkable skill and an astonishing generosity of spirit, she transforms the quiet lives of ordinary men and women into dazzling works of art.