The Surface of the Earth is a grim, Faulknerian story of three generations of middle-class southerners…. Covering a span of forty years and told largely through long letters or stylized speeches (sermons or lectures), the novel makes its stolid point: "People get what they need if they stand still and wait till the earth sends it up…. What they need, not want." This is the sum of Rob Mayfield's wisdom…. (p. 842)

The ideal is modest enough, as Rob describes it: "an ordinary home containing no more than an ordinary home. A decent grown man with clean work to push against ten hours a day that would leave him with the strength to come back at dark in courtesy and patience to the people who had waited—a woman he had chosen for their mutual want (who went on wanting and receiving as he did: courteous, patient) and the...