Ellen Douglas is best known for her re-creations of the small-town South and has been critically acclaimed for her efforts. She sets many of her narratives in the fictional community of Homochitto County, Mississippi, where the sensibilities of place, family, and propriety provide a foundation for stories that examine the troubled racial inheritance of the region, the ways in which family members relate among themselves and with outsiders, and the sexual roles imposed upon middle-class white women. Although critics have described Douglas's fiction in terms ranging from "old-fashioned" to "postmodern" and "avant-garde," Charline R. McCord suggests that one of the significant strengths of Douglas's writing is that "the voice is incredibly consistent throughout."

Ellen Douglas is the pseudonym of Josephine Ayres Haxton, who assumed the pen name out of respect for her maternal aunts. After completing her first novel, A Family's Affairs (1962), Haxton harbored concerns about the effect...