Book excerpt: This stunning collection of short stories, by one of America's finest craftsman of the form, focuses on themes of coming of age in 1950's rural Virginia. Each of the seven stories follows the central character, Reed Bryant, through the difficult emotional passages between childhood and adulthood, with all its complexities and confusions. Huddle's voice is clear and sympathetic, wry and unflinching, rendering memories into an elegy for a time and place that can never be returned to.This edition includes a new forward by the author, who, more than twenty years after the book's release, reflects upon the significance of writing about one's past, and how it has affected and supported what has become a long and much-lauded career.