Spencer Road: A Short Story Sequence

Predictable, undramatic yet sweetly evocative, this short-story sequence by first-time author Smith is told by and about the Spencer children--Gil, Elizabeth and Maggie--who grow up during the 1940s and '50s at the end of a hard-packed dirt road near Atlanta. As the Spencer family farm begins to fail, the children move from a youthful sense of vague foreboding to specific experiences of loss. Smith keeps the daily tenor of existence vividly in the forefront with loving details of a struggling middle-class childhood. In the background, mother Edith grows more distant and frazzled, and the beloved family cook grows bonier and more frail. The big stuff happens offstage: father Frank suffers a stroke; he and his brothers sell off sections of their acreage; Gil goes off to war. Smith's focus on the ordinary pays off in memorable images: the student crossing guard who wears his white patrol bar to a party; the Modern Screen magazine Elizabeth reads while daydreaming about a German POW working on the adjacent farm; the condescending doctor who uses his prize camellias to turn a head bandage into a ridiculous crown. Maggie's reflections on the accidental death of a tiresome cousin are as close to full-throated epiphany as Smith brings to her slowly unfolding but delicately rewarding collection of stories. (Nov.)