SOURCE: “The American Adam in the Southern Wasteland: William Hoffman's Follow Me Home and the Ethics of Redemption,” in The Fictional World of William Hoffman, edited by William L. Frank, University of Missouri Press, 2000, pp. 24-45.

In the following essay, Van Ness examines the theme of spiritual redemption in the short stories of Follow Me Home. Van Ness identifies Hoffman's protagonists as American incarnations of the biblical Adam, situated in a fallen “southern wasteland.” As such, Hoffman's protagonists are viewed as independent, self-reliant individuals whose rediscovery of old-fashioned morality and the virtues of the heart lead to renewal and “a spiritual wholeness.”

William Hoffman’s third collection of short stories, Follow Me Home, constitutes a continuation of his earlier volumes, Virginia Reels and By Land, by Sea. Hoffman’s protagonists have almost always been outsiders, men and women who reject the traditional values sanctioned by society; they keep...