Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK “Extremely powerful…Me and My Baby View the Eclipse is about striving and the secret nobility of people who live in a small-town American South. In these stories—thank heaven—not everything fits: they are loose, they are sometimes awkward, but just about every one shines with revelation and awe in the face of momentary greatness and tragedy.…Nearly every one of these stories could move a reader to tears, for in almost every one of them there is a moment of vision, or love, or unclothed wonder that transforms something plain into something transcendent.”—The New York Times Book Review “Remarkable…Lee Smith is a Southern storyteller in the very best tradition, combining an unmistakable voice with an infallible sense of story.… Her craft is so strong it becomes transparent, and, like the best storytellers, she knows how to get out of the way so the story can tell itself.”—San Francisco Chronicle “From its wonderful title to its final sentence, this book brims with the poetry of the South.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “Marvelously entertaining…These are stories you want to read again to catch all the things you missed the first time around."—The Boston Globe