With this book all the Gibbsville stories by the American master John O'Hara are finally collected in a single volume. John O'Hara called it "my Pennsylvania Protectorate," identifying the anthracite coal region of his hometown, Pottsville, in Schuykill County. Between Appointment in Samarra (1934) and his death in 1970, O'Hara set five novels and more than fifty short stories or novellas in the region. With this lasting accomplishment, O'Hara's Gibbsville joined Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha and Wolfe's Altamont as enduring recreations of American life. O'Hara rightly declared, "Every great writer of fiction was a great social historian." And no American writer practiced social fiction better than O'Hara. The miners in the company towns, the country club set, the shopkeepers, the bartenders, the barbers, the collegians: They are here honestly portrayed, safe from time's distortions. Gibbsville, PA permits readers to experience fully the community O'Hara recorded with fidelity.