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With the 11 stories in this long-awaited collection, Mary Ward Brown once again offers her devoted fans a palette of new literary pleasures. The hallmarks of her style, so finely wrought in the award-winning Tongues of Flame (1986) -- the fully realized characters, her deep sensitivity, a defining sense of place and time -- are back in all their richness to involve and enchant the reader.

All but one of the stories are set in Alabama. They deal with dramatic turning points in the lives of characters who happen to be southerners, many juxtaposed between Old South sensibility and manners and New South modernity and expectations. Among these is a new widow who is not consoled by well-meaning, proselytizing Christians; a middle-aged waitress in love with the town "catch"; a bedridden belle dependent upon her black nurse; a "special" young man in a newspaper shop; a young faculty wife who attempts generosity with a lower-class neighbor; and a lawyer caught in the dilemma of race issues. Through their diverse voices, Brown proves herself a graceful and gifted storyteller who writes with an authoritative pen, inventing and inhabiting the worlds of her set of characters with insight, compassion, and wit.

Most of the stories in It Wasn't All Dancing have appeared previously in prominent national magazines and literary journals, including the Atlantic Monthly, Grand Street, and the Threepenny Review. This fine collection should appeal to a wide audience among writers, literature scholars, and general readers alike.

• January 2012 Indie Next List
• December 2011 Indie Next List
• November 2011 Indie Next List