Ed Southern's stories are about hard work and hard times and what is required of a boy to become a man in such a place and time. They are also about class-that taboo subject in America-and about anger, love, and yearning. Carefully written, with the best dialogue I've read in years, these terrific and utterly original stories are made to last-like a stone pathway or a brick wall. - Lee Smith, author of On Agate Hill and The Last Girls