Mary Hood began publishing her short stories in the early 1980s when writers such as Raymond Carver, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Ann Beattie were writing fiction called minimalist, characterized by a detached first-person narrator whose story had no resolution. At the same time the second Southern Renascence was flourishing, dominated by the voices of strong women whose themes echo the traditional regional concern with family and community, but whose demographics shift beyond local setting and character. While Hood breaks ranks with the minimalists-her third-person narrator allows no distance from the characters, and the stories have conclusions-she joins Eudora Welty, Lee Smith, Alice Walker, Anne Tyler, Doris Betts, Tina McElroy Ansa, and Ellen Douglas in writing stories of men and women who struggle with the bonds of love, family, and place. Published originally in such prestigious magazines as The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, and Harper's, the stories in...