Book summary

Styron calls these three stories--all of which take place in the Virginia Tidewater of the 1930s--"an imaginative shaping of real events." They include the reminiscences of a Marine about to participate in the invasion of Japan, a child recalling the last day of a former slave he knew, and the death of a young teenager's mother from agonizing cancer.

Media reviews

"[These stories] reverberate and resonate off one another in ways that will surprise and delight the attentive reader."