There can be little doubt that Eudora Welty is one of the consummate storytellers of twentieth-century America. Born to a region, period and family rich in traditional oral culture, Welty early acquired an enduring delight in narratives of all kinds, oral and written. Since her mother and her mother's female friends were the principal oral storytellers of her youth, Welty's own developing narrative perspective was distinctly feminine and, in a strongly patriarchal Southern culture, at least gently interrogatory of the established systems of power. At the same time, Welty's love of narrative and extraordinary empathy with all of her characters infuse her fictional explorations of Southern families and communities with a special caring quality. As the literary critic Carol Manning notes, "Welty characterizes concretely the day-to-day lives and special events of some quite ordinary people. And she makes us care for them. Portraying them in depth, she...