Henley's [Crimes of the Heart] has elicited comparisons with the works of such distinguished Southern writers as Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor, in part because she writes with wit and compassion about good country people gone wrong or whacko. Crimes of the Heart is set in the small town of Hazelhurst, Mississippi, five years after Hurricane Camille, and it chronicles two dizzying days in the down-home, upended lives of the MaGrath sisters. (pp. 40, 42)

Although Crimes of the Heart is structured as a six-character, three-act, one-set comedy, Henley's accomplishment is not the resurrection of the traditional well-made play but rather the ransacking of it. She has chosen the family drama as her framework—the play takes place entirely in the MaGrath kitchen—but she has populated the household with bizarre characters. In effect, she has mated the conventions of the naturalistic play with the unconventional protagonists of absurdist comedy...