A New Englander raised in the Western Reserve of Ohio, a northerner who resided for many years in the South, and an American who lived in Europe for the last fourteen years of her life but never considered herself an expatriate, Constance Fenimore Woolson earned her reputation as well as her living by writing four novels, a novella, short stories, poems, travel sketches, reviews, and other short nonfiction pieces that mixed realism, regionalism, and romanticism. With her keen powers of observation and her talent for evoking unfamiliar, exotic locales, she began her career as a writer of expository travel articles. She never entirely abandoned this genre, but her career reveals an increasing interest in characterization, particularly the psychological and material effect of setting on the individual. This concern forms the basis of Woolson's most successful writings—the short fiction inspired by her residency in the Great Lakes region...