The fourteen stories contained in this debut collection, all written in the late 1950s and early 1960s, all have post-depression, rural American settings, many (or perhaps all) in the fictional and clearly ironically named "Eden County." Her characters are mostly the rural poor. Having read several of her more contemporary collections in the last year, I was struck again with how often she tells a story in the voice or from the viewpoint of a child or adolescent. I was also once again struck with how amazingly observant she is and how eerily perceptive - and what a damn fine writer she was even as a undergraduate and graduate student. There were a couple of stories that bewildered me, and at least one I didn't care much for, but the others were very good and I thought two very powerful. In "A Legacy," a young girl named Laura is being taken by her father to see her brother a last time. As the story unfolds, the reader comes to understand, much better than Laura, just what the brother's situation is and why it is a "last time." But it is the child's perceptions and reactions as she struggles to understand which are so powerful (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here). The other story which stood out as both riveting and powerful turned out to be her first published story (Mademoiselle, 1959). "In the Old World" is a story of wrong, remorse and racism. The reader catches just a glimpse of something in the story, in one of the characters -- hope maybe, and then it's gone (many of these stories are written with a bit of mystery to them that Oates' slowly undresses). These collected stories seem to challenge American idealism and morality, and they seem to speak to the urges and desires secreted away in all of us. ( )

First Edition, Signed, Duct Jacket , All in MInt Condition. No fading of DJ