Although William Humphrey 's novels and collections of short stories have received high praise from reviewers (some of them fine novelists in their own right, including Reynolds Price and Elizabeth Bowen), he did not create an image for himself in the popular mind. While lesser writers were advancing their careers by appearing on television and making promotional tours, Humphrey remained steadfastly devoted to writing for forty-five years and produced a body of fiction that will secure him a place in American literature after many writers who are now better known have faded. Although geographical conventions categorize Humphrey as a Western writer, he can equally be considered a Southern writer: he was born and reared in Clarksville, Red River County, the erstwhile cotton-growing and slave-owning part of east Texas, where a Confederate monument stands in the center of the town square. But Humphrey was not a writer who adhered...