The Southern Woman

“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