"These stories reflect a people and their region - the southern Alabamians of the mobile Bay area. The works derive from various writers' experiences of the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. Notably, these essays and stories were written not only by professional writers, but also by waitresses, roughnecks, teachers, repairmen, housewives, graduate students, professors, and sportsmen. This collection delineates the rich lifestyle of the South, especially the exaggerated importance of the family and rural outdoors in almost everyone's background. The writers' techniques include skillfully executed interior monologues, free indirect discourse, and straightforward narration. As the authors capture or recreate various realms of experience, there is an honest confrontation of life itself that reverberates in one's consciousness after reading the collection." - Intro