Piedmont-Marton holds a Ph.D. in English and teaches American literature and administers "In the Garden of the North American Martyrs" belongs to the category, or genre, of literature known as modern realism. Tobias Wolff has often expressed his admiration for the stories of John Cheever and is a particular fan of James Joyce's collection of stories Dubliners. Despite his canny eye for detail and his gift for dialog, however, Wolff seems to work against the constraints of realism. "In the Garden of the North American Martyrs" in particular dramatizes the tension between the realistic and symbolic ways of looking at the world. The story, in Wolff's own words, "bursts the bounds of traditional realistic fiction." Reviewer Brian Kaplan writes in the Nation that Wolff "scrutinizes the disorders of daily living to find significant order underneath the surface." "In the Garden of the North American Martyrs" suggests...