Specific social concerns are difficult to locate in Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock, at least among the author's primary interests, for two reasons. First, the novel's broad scope, encompassing virtually all of society in its many and varied characters as well as most of society's major institutions, makes it easier to imagine that society as a whole is the author's principal concern. And so it is, although it is possible to pick out more particular concerns in the interests of individual characters. For example, Lianne Morrison (arguably the central character) is intensely interested in the problems besetting public education in Arkansas and tirelessly campaigns for improvement in this area. In a similar vein, one of the real events underlying the fictional world portrayed here is the passage by the Arkansas state legislature in 1981 of the "Creation Science Bill" — a law that would...