Brent has a Ph.D. in American Culture, with a specialization in American cinema, from the Uni versity of Michigan. She is a freelance writer/editor and film critic and teaches courses in American cinema. In the following essay, she considers the main character's desire to hang onto her memories of her family farmhouse and small Southern hometown way of life, which is rapidly slipping away from her.

Bobby Ann Mason is a Southern writer known for her stories that express a strong sense of place. "Residents and Transients," as the title suggests, is about a woman who is torn between her attachment to her hometown and family farmhouse, where she has been a "resident" most of her life, and her attachment to her marriage, which necessitates a "transient" lifestyle, as her husband's job requires that they move every few years.

On one level, Mary, the narrator...