SOURCE: Nelson, Raymond. “Hills of Home.” Virginia Quarterly Review 60, no. 1 (winter 1984): 169-73.

In the following review, Nelson explores the defining characteristics of Pancake's short stories.

Breece David John Pancake was blessed or cursed with the true creative gift. In 1979 he called off his experiment with life, just as he was coming into full possession of his talent. At least for the time being, those facts of biography are likely to dominate responses to his work. The elegiac note has already crept into early reviews of this remarkable first and last book of stories [The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake], and it informs the memorial essays contributed by James Alan McPherson and John Casey to the extent that the fiction, which only yesterday startled Casey with its quality, is left all but unremarked. Probably that is as it should be. There are things that must be said about loss...