For several years short stories by Bobbie Ann Mason have been turning up—rather improbably, it seemed—in The New Yorker and The Atlantic. The improbability lay in the fact that Miss Mason writes almost exclusively about working-class and farm people coping with their muted frustrations in western Kentucky (south of Paducah, not far from Kentucky Lake, if that helps you), and the gap to be bridged empathically between her readership and her characters was therefore formidable. But formidable also is Miss Mason's talent, and her craftsmanship. "Shiloh and Other Stories," her first collection, shows not only how good she can be but how consistently good she remains. The most improbable thing about this volume is that not a single page lags, hardly a paragraph fails, not one among 16 stories is less than impressive….

Loss and deprivation, the disappointment of pathetically modest hopes, are the themes Bobbie Ann...