For the heroines in this collection of Lee Smith's stories [Cakewalk], life happens on two levels. There are the half truths, pieties and conventions of Middle America, Southern division, and then there are the secret impulses of the heart. Sometimes this tension turns her women into lovable—maybe too lovable—eccentrics, like wild old Mrs. Darcy in "Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger at the Beach," who hides her gift of healing from her worldly nagging daughters, or scatterbrained Florrie in the title story "Cakewalk," whose disorderly household and fantastic homemade cakes express a full and innocent heart. Sometimes, too, they are not so lovable, like the iron-willed grandmother in "Artists."… Others flounder, comically like Martha, the mad housewife of "Dear Phil Donahue," whose ideas of love are straight out of a country western song and who is stranded by her low-life boyfriend in a Louisiana motel. (pp...