On the 25th anniversary of its first publication, here is the definitive edition of the book Archbishop Desmond Tutu called a hauntingly beautiful story about love, family, and relationships, now with a new preface from the author. Sam Peeks beloved wife of fifty-seven years, Cora, has died. His children are anxious. No one knows how Sam will survive. How can this elderly man live alone? How can he run a farm? How can he keep driving his dilapidated...

A story that traces the bonds between four generations of resourceful Southern women through stories passed from one generation to another. Kaye Gibbons was born in Nash County, North Carolina and attended Rocky Mount Senior High School, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her first novel, Ellen Foster, was awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction of the American Academy and Institute of the...

Married for 20 years to the Reverend Benjamin Lynch, a handsome, ambitious minister of the prestigious Methodist church, Dean Lynch has never quite adjusted her temperament to the demands of the role of a Sunday wife. When her husband is assigned to a larger and more demanding community in the Florida panhandle, Dean becomes fast friends with Augusta Holderfield, a woman whose good looks and extravagant habits immediately entrance her. As their friendship...

The protagonists of these nine short stories learn to accept the harsh loneliness of life.

Nonny Frett understands the meaning of "between a rock and a hard place." She's got two mothers, "one deaf-blind and the other four baby steps from flat crazy." She's got two men: her husband, easing out the back door; and her best friend, laying siege to her heart in her front yard. She has a job that holds her in the city, and she's addicted to a little girl stuck deep in the country. And she has two families: the Fretts, who stole her and raised...

Laurel Gray Hawthorne's life seems neatly on track--a passionate marriage, a treasured daughter, and a lovely home in suburban Victorianna--until everything she holds dear is suddenly thrown into question the night she is visited by the ghost of a her 13-year old neighbor Molly Dufresne.

"In a near-future Southern city, everyone is talking about a new experimental medical procedure that boasts unprecedented success rates. In a society plagued by racism, segregation, and private prisons, this operation saves lives with a controversial method--by turning people white. Like any father, our unnamed narrator just wants the best for his son Nigel, a biracial boy whose black birthmark is getting bigger by the day. But in order to afford...

After twenty-one years Micah (Mike) Winship is making the big move--she's going home for a visit. She hasn't been back since 1963, when her father threw her out, but now he is dying and asking for her. And although she is armed with her successful journalism career and the strength found after her divorce, she is nearing forty and her sophisticated urban lifestyle is falling apart. Heading home, Mike is unprepared for a past that has lain in wait...