Reynolds Price is most accurately described as a writer whose sharp realism and striking use of the local color of northern North Carolina are tinged with fantasy and, at times, mysticism. Price embraces the area about which he usually writes with understanding, insight, and compassion. By concocting Gothic tales that present with authenticity and honesty a cast of characters who recur in many of his works, Price escapes the sentimentalism that might destroy his objectivity. To classify him as a Southern writer is perhaps too facile; while the South is his usual literary venue, the scope of his writing far exceeds a narrow regionality.

Edward Reynolds Price was born on 1 February 1933 in Macon, North Carolina, a small town near the central northern border. His parents were William Solomon and Elizabeth Rodwell Price; his brother, William, is eight years his junior. He has spent most of his life little...