[It] is a fact that K. A. Porter was as emotionally involved with the South as William Faulkner and Eudora Welty. Her love for her South is reflected in her writing. (p. 441)

Some critical comments demonstrate how fatal it can be to overlook K. A. Porter's emotional involvement with her native area. She created a myth from her family history, but she did not mistake the myth for reality. And she did not idealize or sentimentalize the past, yet she made it clear that there is no escape from it. The characters in her fiction see the past for what it is, so they may organize their lives in terms of the actual. And the past provides the standard by which they finally judge, and by which they are judged by the readers. Without knowledge of K. A. Porter's Southern background, it is easy to misjudge the perspective...