Rib Cage

In Rib Cage, Greg Miller (Iron Wheel), chair of the English Department at Millsaps College, paints a tender but incisive social portrait of Southern culture, individuals, relationships, families. ""Whenever they lay down, he couldn't sleep/ without his back turned toward her, so she left,"" he writes, recounting complicated events without judgment or fuss. In the soft cadences and syntactical and adjectival particularities of Southern speech, Miller's stories are quiet, understated and revealing of human complexity. ( Nov.)